Meeting the skills challenge

production. Simon Lott speaks to two training providers about what the industry needs to do to ensure the carbon revolution is fully supported.

In previous articles I have alluded several times to the disjointed nature of the UK composites industry. Currently, one might say that the industry is still in the process of gathering momentum and is snowballing towards the mainstream regardless of how it happens, but there are always going to be growing pains no matter what product is being bought to market.

The composites industry is struggling with the manufacturing skills shortage as much, if not more so, than any other sector. The diversity of materials and processes mean that more often than not, skills are learned in isolation between seniors and peers within companies that will have found their own ways of working. Skills learned are therefore not only less transferable, but also may come with bad habits attached. Apprentices and graduates fresh from college or university are also more likely to be ill-equipped and take longer to train. Despite this, there is currently little provision for structured training and very few companies offering it.

There are of course key educational institutions that teach the craft, but on the commercial side there has been little incentive for training providers to set up shop. Two exceptions to this rule are Consuta Training (formerly the Composites Training Consortium), led by current Composites UK chairman and former NEG Micon training officer Chris Little, and Dark Matter Composites, whose managing director Rodney Hansen has previously been project manager and lecturer at the Advanced Composites Training Centre at Oxford & Cherwell Valley College and who Semta continues to consult for writing National Occupational Standards for composites.

“Many composite companies in the UK still probably employ fewer than 50 people and the highest priority on their list is not usually training.” explains Little. “There are industries like F1 that have specialised and got on with it, but many others have seen a lack of development. There have never been the training programmes to give people the opportunity to raise the bar.”

Speaking to Little and Hansen, the most striking facet of their enterprises is that both have a genuine passion for the composites industry. This is not simply a case of supply, demand and profit and the two companies often work collaboratively and share resources where necessary. Both have started from scratch with the aim of providing complete skill sets that can be bought to a range of positions and both believe that with the proper support, the UK composites industry has a very bright future. In this spirit, Hansen enthuses that he is happy for anyone to use the course content he has developed free of charge, provided it is administered properly with recognised tutors, facilities and equipment. Little meanwhile is now collaborating with the National Skills Academy for Process Industries, which will be launching its new Composites and Biotechnology academy.

A growing need

Composites UK believes there to be around 600-700 organisations supplying OEMs and tier ones in the country, but many of these have grown through many little pockets working in isolation, which is where this lacuna in common knowledge has been allowed to form. One of the main problems has simply been to identify where there is need. One problem cited by both men is that due to its cross-sector nature, Companies House, the official Government register of UK companies, doesn’t recognise ‘composites’ as an industry like it does aerospace or automotive for example. Therefore, no-one is exactly sure how many companies are out there and what their activities are.

It’s also important to remember is that despite many engineers having matured in a particular environment, most of the composite processing skills required of the modern industry are actually highly transferable. So, despite their seemingly grassroots approach, both men demonstrate a remarkable diversity in their customer base, a clear sign of the need for both basic and advanced skills that many organisations, big or small, can’t deliver in-house. As such, both companies run a schedule of standard courses, but just as often run tailored courses that evaluate a company’s methods and bring it up to speed.

Course content

Consuta offers two or five day courses and Dark Matter five day courses covering all the widely used techniques such as pattern making, wet lay-up, resin infusion, prepreg, laminating, repair and so on, with a good mix of theory and practice. Looking towards the future and with Little’s background in the wind industry, Consuta has also now added specific courses looking at blade inspection and repair and composites for renewable energies. He is now seeking Lloyd’s Register approval so that the courses are recognised internationally.

“There are a lot of turbines running today that are badly made and a lot of it is down to production issues,” he explains. “The focus has previously been about getting products out the door but in my experience there have been many problems relating to bonding and people not understanding why lay-ups must be done in a certain direction and how to apply material, causing wrinkles and bumps. That’s why it’s so important for them to understand the material they’re using. Crucially, if a company isn’t doing something right, how do its employees know they’re not doing it right? We should be encouraging them to take education on board, especially at technician level.”

As an example of some of the more tailored products offered, Dark Matter has recently replicated its own facilities for GKN Aerospace Filton to support wing manufacture at its newly constructed facility in Bristol, delivering a bespoke five day course to a steady stream of technicians and engineers. Conversely, it has also seen a lot of start-up companies offering niche products or that want to develop a new idea. Hansen has even delivered a course for an American artist who wanted to produce his art in carbon fibre. Even more indicative of the global training shortage, he describes that he now receives weekly requests to set up similar facilities in the Far East. Consuta has seen a similar mix of students, and while it offers standard courses is more focused on customer specific analysis and bespoke content, for example taking on major projects for such high profile clients as REPower Systems and Lola Composites.

The complete picture

Dark Matter has also developed more high end courses to meet demand, it’s most popular being ‘Composite Materials & Processes for Engineers & Designers’, an all-encompassing, intensive run through the main processes, post-processing and repair with a focus on component design principles and production practicalities. The course now runs on average ten times a year.

“It’s 40% practical rather than the usual 60-70% but we cover twice the amount of theory in a week,” explains Hansen. “Our theory, demos and practicals aren’t competence based, they are guided using limited, simple spec materials based on theory so we can use it in many different ways. A lot of composite design is intuitive, but there are a lot of aspects to it and sometimes you have to change the mindset of people or companies that have certain ways of doing things. Sometimes students can be so involved in the mathematical side of things that they forget what they can actually achieve with the materials using a slightly different approach.

“Composites are not so high end that the average person can’t pick it up. There’s just a lot of process knowledge to build up so what we try to cover is key theory and process knowledge and by doing this together, people get the whole thing. Even experienced people will get something out of it. Our courses are designed to be challenging, and we find for example that even people who do infusion all the time usually get an average 50% scrap rate on that course. Essentially we’re telling them all the things they should have known.”

So carefully constructed are the courses that Dark Matter has even designed its own workbenches with removable dust and fume extraction units and specifies its own materials from suppliers such as ACG. For example for its prepreg courses it uses a cosmetic aramid which is seldom used in industry but cures rapidly and is much more manageable in the class environment.

However, Hansen also changes materials throughout a course to keep students on the ball and ensure that they develop a genuine understanding of how their specific properties affect the process, and are not just reiterating what they have learnt. Similarly, its stock of over 100 mould tools are designed to pose all the problems that can possibly occur in lay-up.

At a time when the UK contains a wide variety of companies at all levels of processing maturity, it is this focus on core skills that training providers hope will allow engineers at all levels to get up to speed and successfully equip them to drive the industry forward for generations to come. With enthusiastic independent companies such as Consuta and Dark Matter growing and developing, and institutions like the National Skills Academy and the National Composites Centre coming into operation as focal points for the industry, the future of the UK composites industry is starting to look altogether more cohesive.

www.consuta.com
www.darkmattercomposites.co.uk