2015. What a year....

2015 was an extremely busy year for Light Black Design.....

We have been very lucky to be carrying on the work we have been doing with Acro Aircraft Seating, helping them develop their next few economy class, lightweight seating. All this work culminates in the first showing of their new Series 6 seats at the Hamburg AirCraft Interiors Expo on April 5th to 7th. Until then, we obviously cant show you these seats but we will of course put a load on our Twitter feed once the press get to see them....

These final release of the seats is an evolution of the seats that were on display last year. 

Since that show, the NPD team (New Products Development) has been formed and now has around 12 engineers working in it, looking at not only this release of the Series 6 seats, but Series 7 & 8 too. Light Black Designs role in the office is to work with all the NPD group and composite suppliers, to engineer these seats to be the most comfortable, reliable, lightweight, low costs seats on the market. And those requirements, in that order, are straight from the mouth of Chris Brady, who is the MD of Acro and whose general amazing ethos is the reason that they are on of the most successful companies in the country. Well done Chris!

Once again, we will keep you up-to-date on these seats as an when they are released, and we wish all at Acro the best of luck for the show.

And for the rest of the week, Dan was lucky enough to have been asked to fill a few gaps in the Design Team at Land Rover BAR, working mainly on their second test boat, T2 Whilst always intended as a temporary role for Dan, whilst they sort out the full numbers in the design office, it was a fantastic team to be part for 11 months and we wish them every success in the future. And if you look at the results from this last weekend in Oman, it looks like they are well on track.

What was fantastic to see was Sir Ben's vision, looking outside of the usual people involved in the Americas cup, and bringing in some of the top people, materials and processes from the other advanced composite industries, such as Motorsport and getting them all to work together to make his team even better. This is always a brave thing to do, and other teams have made it clear they think the best thing to do is only with people who have done the Americas cup. Safe, but maybe limits your possibilities. So, Land Rover BAR now have a fantastic team of people, from a wide range of backgrounds, who will all be able to provide valuable input, based on other projects they have worked on that may just open up some avenues that other teams may not see. Good luck Ben.

So, back to 2016 and we are looking forward to continuing our work with Acro Aircraft Seating as well some other automotive projects, both high and low volume, that seem to be all lining themselves very nicely indeed. And in-between all these projects we Dan will be carrying on the development work of the Flattens, in particular the latest FL015 spec Flatten, for one design boats such as the J70, M20, M24 etc which have all been looking for a horizontal, furling batten that works like the flattens do. Following on from some amazing results in the J70 worlds and Europeans in 2015 where Boats.com used some development FL015's to great success, this is something we cant wait to get back onto. 



And whilst it was fantastic to be other peoples offices for most of 2015, the view from our little office isn't so bad after-all.

Moving offices (again...)

We have now moved our office a few metres down the road (its a long story...) to:

4 Lippen Cottages
West Meon
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU32 1JW

All the contact numbers have remained the same.

Many thanks

Dan

Moving Office

As of the end of October 2014, our office will be moving a few miles down the road to:

Light Black Design Ltd
2 Lippen Cottages
West Meon
Petersfield
Hampshire
England
GU32 1JW

Until we get all the office landlines installed, please contact Dan on +44 (0) 777 864 875

Some of the projects we were invoved with in 2013 & early 2014

Continuing on from all the successful projects to date, we continued to work in the aircraft, road car and marine sectors.

Of particular interest was a project with Antony Dodworth where we re-engineered all the geometry (to suit the processing and materials) and engineered the tooling for a carbon fibre bonnet for a mainstream German OEM, that will go into production in the coming years. As usual, we cant say too much about the project, but when it does go into production it will change the whole way composite parts are looked at for mainstream automotive projects.

 We have also been worked on a medium volume composite seat for an Italian OEM, that could be pressed in under 5 minutes. This project involved a huge amount of detailed composite FEA that was run in-house here at Light Black Design.

On the Aircraft side of things, we continued to work with the same supplier as we worked with last year, and helped them optimise various packages and structures, and continue to work with them today. This work is really interesting as taking weight out of any aircraft part is vital, whilst still meeting the stringent regulations that the industry has.

And in the marine sectors most of the work we have done is connected to the Flattens project with Primrose Fry Technologies. This can be seen at PF-Technologies.

We also worked on various projects with Futuremech. This is company run by Humphrey Bunyan, who was instrumental in setting up all of Future Fibres machinery and processes they use in producing some of the most advanced composite masts and rigging in the marine industry. These projects ranges from one-piece, furling, carbon fibre head stay systems to high volume composite parts for the rail industry.

And then, in-between these other marine projects we even looked at a modern version of the Seal 22 (that was designed by Dan's father, Angus Primrose, in the late '60's). Whilst its unlikely that this will ever go into production, it was fun to look at....



Some of the main events we will be at in 2014

Following the great receptions we got at last years shows, we will be at the following events. If anyone wants to meet up with us, just drop us a mail at Info(at)LightBlackDesign(dot)com.

Southampton Boat show, Dan will be there on the 12th September

Composite Engineering Show, NEC, UK. Dan will be there on the 11th November

METS 2014, Amsterdam. Dan will be on the 19th and 20th November

We look forward to seeing you there.

what we did for the rest of 2012....

Conscious that we haven't been very good at updating this website, and having spent most of 2012 working with Simon and Oscar, developing our Flattens, for Primrose Fry Technologies, there was little time to get much Light Black Design work done. But having said that, we had quite a few enquiries and now that 2013 has started we will be talking to all those people, who are all looking to improve the efficiency of  their existing and future projects, and starting to work with them all as soon as we can give them our uninterrupted attention.

Whilst we cant discuss the actual names of the people we are talking to, the products we hope to be working with range from composite wheelchairs to lightweight aircraft seats, advanced composite road cars to medium volume Taxis, from Injection moulded Instrument Panel covers to Test Rigs for one of the UK Olympic Hopefuls in the 49er in the 2016 games. All of these projects will allow us to apply the knowledge we have gained over the last 20 years of working with a wide range of advanced materials, from F1 grade carbon fibres to precision machined metallic alloys, where will work with their engineering teams to further optimise all areas of their processes, from Design and Analysis right through to production Tooling and Parts.

Dan sets up a new company to run alongside Light Black Design

Earlier in 2012, Dan Primrose and Simon Fry set up new British company called Primrose Fry Technologies Ltd, to work alongside their existing businesses, and allow them both to bring their ideas to market.

In January 2012 at the London Boatshow, Simon and Dan met many of the key people within Yachting business, to reveal to them their Flattens for the very first time.

Whilst we cannot say much more at this time, what we are extremely proud to say is that they were extremely well received, and we look forward to the Official Launch of Flattens later on this year.

Following the increasing interest for the Flattens, Simon and Dan asked Oscar Strugstad to join then as Chairman of PF Technologies which we are happy to say he accepted, and we are all working hard to ensure the maximum success for the business.

In the meantime, if you require any information, please do not hesitate to email Dan or Simon at Dan (at) PF-Technologies dot com or Simon (at) PF-Technologies dot com or call the UK office on +44 1730 828 188. Any public updates will appear at http://PF-Technologies.blogspot.co.uk/

Body Engineering of Karsan Taxi

Earlier this year, Light Black Design were contracted by Hexagon Studio to do the full Body Engineering of the critical sections for the exterior panels of their Taxi Project, intended for worldwide production in 2012.

As we posted in January, this project was intended as a replacement for the NY Cabs. Whilst it is unfortunate that they were beaten at the final-post by Nissan, Hexagon Studio (and their parent company Karsan) took note of all the positive support for their taxi, and made a very quick decision to produce the vehicle for a range of alternative customers.

Whilst the specific details of this project are confidential at this point in time, what we can say is that the first stage of the project for Light Black Design involved working closely with the Hexagon Studio's principal engineers, designers and manufacturers, where we were able to offer our vast knowledge of working with a large range of lightweight materials, to help their engineers select the most appropriate materials and processing methods for the Exterior Panels of the vehicle.

Following this initial investigation we have been busy generating extremely detailed documents that will form the principal guidelines for our clients engineers to fully define all the exterior panels and the associated fixing methodology to fit the panels to the BIW (Body in White).

Alongside this engineering ssection of the project, we have also written a selection of  "How to..." guides which will give all their engineers a range of handbooks that will enable them all to design and engineer theses type of panel in the future, in materials that they might not have traditionally used in the past.

All this work is being done both in 2D and 3D formats, using Catia V5

Rotating foils on Yacht Rigging - upwind sailing in only about 3 knots true wind

In this video we can see how the foils that we designed for Future Fibres, in Spain, work as we sail upwind, in only about 3 knots true wind speed.....

What is critical to the success of these foils is that each one is designed so that it creates to most efficient aerofoils shape (a NACA section) for that particular section of standing rigging.

This means that the drag from the airflow over each linear length of rigging is potentially reduced by as much as 75% when compared to the bare, circular rigging it covers. And because they are free to rotate 180 degrees, they will always line up with the airflow, as it changes over the height of the rig.

And perhaps whats more significant than the reduction in drag is the fact the downstream air flow is much less disturbed, and thus increases the potential power that can be produced from the mainsail. Where traditionally we can find that the airflow downstream of simple rod rigging may not have stabilised for some distance after passing the rigging, the flow over a foil such as these can be up to nominal speed some 20mm after passing the rigging.

And perhaps the last point to make here in this brief article is that they can be fitted to any existing (circular) rigging, and wont be penalised under IRC (at the time of writing...!)

In the following posts you can see how the foils work in more breeze upwind, and also how they work as we hoist and gybe an asymmetric genneker in light winds.....

For more information on these foils, contact Future Fibres in Spain, or take a look at their site at FutureFibres.com

Rotating foils on Yacht Rigging - Sailing Upwind in about 5 knots TWS

In this video we can see how the foils that we designed for Future Fibres, in Spain, work as we sail upwind and the True wind speed increases to only about 5 knots.

Rotating foils on Yacht Rigging - Upwind as the wind increases to about 6 knots

In this video we can see how the foils that we designed for Future Fibres, in Spain, work as the true wind increases to about 5 knots.

Rotating foils on Yacht Rigging - Hoist

In this video we can see how the foils that we designed for Future Fibres, in Spain, work as the asymmetric genneker is hoisted in light airs.

Rotating foils on Yacht Rigging - Gybe

In this video we can clearly see how the foils we designed for Future Fibres, in Spain, work as the boat is gybed, in light airs.

How we use Catia V5 in the office

Once again, the automotive design offices are in a extremely privileged position to have the most advanced 3D CAD systems as standard. Whilst there are a number to choose from, throughout the majority of the 14 years I was lucky enough to be in various offices like McLaren Automotive, Caparo and Gordon Murray Design we all used Dassault Systemes CATIA.

Although the initial investment is often hard to justify, I 100% believe that if the software is used properly and used in as many of the design stages as possible (i.e. from initial concepts right through to even the hydrodynamics of a yacht) the costs can be justified.

Whilst it is easy for me to say that it can be used efficiently, after 14 years sitting behind my CAD screen, it is a daunting task taking on a new design tool such as this, and the hard bit starts right from the start when you try and decide which of the many options you want/need. In the marine markets these generally range from styling tools, naval architecture, general 3D CAD right through to the composite FEA software. And of course, if you have the budget, these options could end up costing a frightening amount of money. But in most offices, the users just need some surfacing and then some solid generating tools, together with the standard 2D packages. And in fact its not until you need to generate A-Class surfaces (exterior panels) for cars that you need all the top level surfacing tools, particularly if you are importing your hull and foil shapes from other software.

To cut a long story short, I believe that having a tool such as Catia will help everyone in a design office. And due to the fact that the design process withing Catia is all parametric, if you need to go back and change anything it is easy. This makes it significantly faster to create not only the first parts but also the next parts if they are similar. It allows all the designers and engineers to see what everyone else is doing in the office as you can generate large assemblies on your screen and hence reduces errors. It will help to manage to the design process from start to finish, with its data management software called SmarTeam. This allows the engineers to do the design work, send it to the line managers for sign off, and then allows the rest of the office (purchasing, manufacturing etc) to see and download the relevant information.

To get over the first hurdle of trying to choose what I needed, I worked very closely with a company called Intrinsys www.Intrinsys.co.uk, in the UK. They are one of the companies that sell CATIA, and are the people you should go to if you are connected to the marine business. The main reason I chose to buy from them is that having worked with them when I was at Caparo, where they supported us in setting up our own unique solutions to how we wanted the design office to work, I know that whilst they are "salesmen" for CATIA, whats more important is that they are first and foremost, users of the software, and in fact the majority of their engineers on site are working on internal projects designing advanced automotive components for internal and external projects. This is vital when wandering down a "new path" as they were able to give me honest answers and will always be there on the end of the phone if it doesn't all go quite how I was hoping it might...! And for those of you thinking that your office just cannot justify this sort of software, then give them a call and I am sure you will be surprised just how much it might cost.....

So now I am in a position to be able to offer some help or design work to any of the design offices out there who are looking into using this type of software, or who have already chosen it but need more parts designed and engineered.

If any further details are required or if you may have a possible application for this process, then please contact us at any time at Info@LightBlackDesign.com

Sprayed Carbon Fibre

As mentioned in previous posts, Light Black Design  have been working closely with Bentley Motors in the UK, to help them develop a possible process to produce components for future cars within the VW Group.

Key to the engineering of these parts are the use of PUR for the matrix and combining this with a process developed by Bentley Motors called DCFP (Directed Carbon Fibre Preforming).

Key to the potential success of this process is the ability to "spray" chopped carbon fibres (approx 100mm long) onto the mould or part surface whilst still keeping a high degree of alignment of the fibres. This effectively gives you a composite panels with approx 80% of the properties of a Uni-directional tape, but with a fraction of the labour and material costs.

Whilst this is still being developed by Bentley for their automotive products, they are very keen to look at other possible applications, such as marine. I have spoken to them about several possible uses, and I feel that this would be perfect for monolithic parts such as RIBS and tenders. Here, the use of carbon is usually restricted due to material and labour costs, but with this process both of these will be reduced (the labour could even be removed if robots are used). And when every 10% you save in vehicle weight (be it boats or cars) you can save 7% of the fuel. And when you consider the fact that fuel is costing around £1.80 per litre on the rivers now, the potential saving in running costs cannot be ignored.

If any further details are required or if you may have a possible application for this process, then please contact us at any time at Info@LightBlackDesign.com

Short fibre technologhy

Throughout Dans career in the automotive design sector, the principal aim of all the materials and processes that we developed was to reduce the part cost.

Whilst the most efficient use of composites is to create a sandwich panel (ie with a lightweight core and thin, carbon skins to create thickness), in some areas the panels only needed to be monolithic (ie with no core). For these parts (as for most composite parts), the labour cost is a significant portion of the overall cost. To reduce this, several companies have developed "pastes" with shortened fibres in that can laid into the tools rapidly which in turn produces a much lower cost part, with very similar properties to one made from woven cloths.

To take full advantage of this process, and maximise the potential cost savings, there must be a degree of investment in the tooling route taken, but from the studies we have undertaken for automotive customers, the break-even point as far as volumes go is not as high as people might think.....

Having worked very closely with the main composite suppliers developing this technology, Light Black Design are in an ideal position to pass on the advances we have made and advise you on possible areas that they could be used in the production of marine components. Typical products that could benefit form this process are such items as hatch surrounds, steering binnacles, deck hatches and deck gear. The key factor to choosing the right part is that they are all produced in volumes to some degree. The potential list is long...

If any further details are required or if you may have a possible application for this process, then please contact us at any time at Info@LightBlackDesign.com

some lightweight, low cost composite panels

Following on from the forum Dan sat on at the Yacht Racing Design & Technology Symposium in December 2010 www.yrdts.com, here are some of the details of the lightweight, cored and most importantly, cheap, high performance composite panels that were showed at the conference.

This process is one that was developed specifically for the automotive markets, and is traditionally used for rear parcel shelves and boot floors.

During a previous high volume, low-cost car program Dan worked closely with Bayer to develop the process and materials so that we could produce extremely complex 3D parts, that could be used to form the main panels of the chassis. Whilst we cannot obviously show these panels here, we have some small sample sections that will give you an idea of the type of geometry possible.





The process uses Polyurethane as the matrix (rather than the traditional Epoxies and Polyesters usually used in such products). This has an extremely fast cure profile and can be cured in about 90 seconds if required. In fact, from dry cloth on a roll to a fully cured, net edge part ready to be bonded in the chassis was just over 2 minutes... Where these high volumes are needed (up to about 300,000 parts per year) robots are always used to spray the PUR and can also be used to spray additional Chopped fibres into areas that require additional local reinforcements. Dan worked very closely with a company called Hennecke in Germany www.hennecke.com to ensure that all the possible avenues were explored to produce the most efficient (cost and performance) parts.

Whilst these throughput times are perhaps not appropriate for most marine applications, they may allow the designers to produce extremely lightweight, low cost panels such as doors, floorboards. Where a boat manufacturer may perhaps be producing a reasonable boats in a range, if every boat had the same size doors, and every boat has say 3 doors, then the volumes very quickly reach a number that is ideal for this type of process. In fact, on some super yachts, which can have 150m2 of floorboards which are traditionally made from 25mm ply wood, the weight saving could be over 5kg per m2 (i.e 50% of the baseline boards)

If any further details are required or if you may have a possible application for this process, then please contact us at any time at Info@LightBlackDesign.com



The "Taxi of Tomorrow"....

Late in 2010 Dan was contacted by Hexagon Studio, in Turkey, to work with them to specify the manufacturing processes for the Exterior and Interior Panels on their proposal for the New York Cities "Taxi of Tomorrow".

Whilst working closely with Hexagons Engineers we assessed all the feasible materials and processes, and then spent some time shortening the list until we had just the most viable options.

Having written up some detailed specifications of all the panels and their targets, we then contacted some potential Tier 1 suppliers, from a long list of companies we have worked with on previous automotive projects.

As they all came back to us, with all the relevant Part and Tooling costs, we compiled all the information and past it onto Hexagon to help them compile their Best and Final offer for their proposal to NYC.

NYC will make their final decision soon.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/media/totweb/taxioftomorrow_karsan2.html

Optimising the composite structure of RIBS

REDUCING THE WEIGHT AND COST OF PRODUCTION RIBs

Late in the summer of 2010 we were contacted by a leading manufacturer of RIBs in the UK, Coastline Marine, who are looking to further improve the quality of their current line of boats whilst simultaneously reducing the weight and even the overall costs.

Key to this project is my thorough understanding of "what is appropriate" for this type of business. Together with the key people at Coastline we are looking closely at their current laminates and carefully defining new materials that fit within with the current techniques used there. This will result in a more efficient layup that will reduce the production costs and structural weight of the boats. This weight saving is critical to this type of boat where a 10% reduction can typically save 6% of the fuel costs.

Aluminium Tooling for High Quality carbon fibre parts

HIGHER QUALITY PARTS FROM NEW TOOLING METHODS.

Light Black Design is currently working with Richard Faulkner Composites in the UK to design and produce tooling to allow Richard and his team to manufacture multiple carbon fibre parts with an extremely high quality surface finish. To allow them to repeat the quality over and over again I recommended that they machine moulds from aluminium and engaged a machine shop that will produce the tools for a competitive price.

Despite the higher initial investment, the overall cost of producing the 18 carbon parts is lower due to the reduced amount  of preparation work required on the tools before each part is made, with very little finishing needed on the parts.

Lightweight Chassis concept for Bentley Motors...

CONCEPT CHASSIS DESIGN FOR BENTLEY MOTORS

We were contacted by Bentley Motors, in the UK, to help define the geometry and material specifications for an area of a chassis for one of their concept cars being developed by them in conjunction with the other sports car companies in the Volkswagen group.

The baseline materials in this investigation are a further development of my previous work within automotive groups to produce lightweight yet extremely cost effective composite panels, which are viable for current automotive production lines. This technology will be combined with DCFP (Directed Carbon Fibre Preforming) the revolutionary process being developed by Bentley.

Most importantly, this technology has the potential to transform the way certain composite boats are made and even drastically reduce the overall costs. It may indeed close the gap between the cost of glass and carbon fibre boats, which will allow the industry to take advantage of the dramatically reduced running costs of the lighter carbon fibre boats.

 

Rotating aerofoils for Standing Rigging.....

IMPROVED AERODYNAMICS FOR YACHTS STANDING RIGGING

One of the first companies to take advantage of our design and material knowledge was Future Fibres S.L.U, in Spain.

We worked closely with their engineers to design and manufacture a rotating aerofoil section that can be retrofitted to any standing rigging that could significantly improve the performance of the yacht.

Key to the success of these foils is the selection of materials and tooling that are typically only used in the automotive sectors. This was backed up by a deep understanding of aerodynamics that I have gained whilst having been part of top- level sailing and automotive teams.

These products are now being eagerly discussed in the sailing press (click HERE for a link to a copy of an article in November’s issue of Yachting World) and are commercially available for any boat through Future Fibres.

Our work with other industries.....

OTHER INDUSTRIES LIGHT BLACK DESIGN ARE WORKING WITH....

Light Black Design's work is not limited to just the marine and automotive sectors. Other industries are also interested in learning from the advances made by the automotive industry. We have been contacted from all levels of technology, looking either to reduce cost at the higher end, or improve efficiency at the lower end.

For example, Light Black Design was been contacted by a company who design and manufacture satellite systems for global customers.

They have a reputation for producing products for a fraction of the cost of their competitors. I have been asked to come in at appropriate times in future projects to look at the traditional methods currently employed in aerospace industry and to define some alternative methods and processes for non critical areas of the projects, while still achieving the same high levels of quality and design. The key objective is to reduce the overall cost for their premier aerospace programmes.

Working closely with companies such as these allows Light Black Design to keep abreast of all the latest technology and processes, putting us in the unique position of being able to transfer the knowledge that was once beyond the reach of the marine sector and offer unprecedented guidance in using the advances to their maximum potential.

Light Black Designs First Year....

As we come to the end of Light Black Design's first year, we have been working closely with a variety of businesses in both the marine and automotive sectors. We have looked at a wide range of areas where companies can improve the quality and performance of their existing and future product lines, ranging from low volume RIBS to high volume production yachts, from component manufactures to aerospace structures.

Since starting Light Black Design I have been to various shows and exhibitions throughout Europe.

Once again I will be attending many of these events in 2010 & 2011 and would be more than happy to arrange a meeting if there is anything you would like to discuss with me.

Here is a brief list of some of the events and the dates I will be there:

METS, Amsterdam. 16^th and 17^th November 2010. 

Yacht Racing Design & Technology Symposium, Estoril. 14^th and 15^th December 2010.

London International Boat Show. 7th January, 2011

JEC Composites Show, Paris. 29th to 31st March, 2011.

I have contributed to an article on “...car design versus boat design...” for SuperYacht Design to be published in December 2010 in their Q5 edition.

Our 2010 Newsletter can downloaded HERE.