CORIOLIS COMPOSITES

At the very beginning of Coriolis Composites were three young and highly skilled French friends: Yvan Hardy, Alexandre Hamlyn and Clémentine Gallet: who had decided to make a living from their passion in competition sailing. In 1996, they graduated as mechanical engineers and where awarded for the fresh and innovative response they brought to the question:" how to really industrialize the manufacturing of composite boats?"

Their starting point was the commonly used fiber machine winding technology. They improved it greatly with a feet on the ground approach to lay the fibers exactly where needed. They rapidly chose to use gantry type robots and, given the encouraging results, decided to put their own money into the business, and started to build prototypes. Rapidly, an industrial challenge became obvious: mastering the handling and the placement of prepreg fibers -thus the computerizing of the robots-.

Simultaneously to fund raising, the first 10 years where intensively devoted to R&D, patents application and to the writing of the terms of references for a new innovative technology. The R&D includes mechanics and computer software development, from the fiber creel to perfectly placed tensile oriented fibers layer. In 2005, the increasing interest of the manufacturing world for the Coriolis achievements reached the aerospace industry. In this period, the commercial aircraft manufacturers were started to have in strong worldwide demand for a true industrialization of their production lines, according to the worldwide demand. International patents have therefore been applied, protecting the industrial property, as in 1998 for boat construction, in 2001 for wind blades and later trough five other patents for equipment constituting the machine.

Entrusted by those many years of research and investment, Coriolis Composites appears now clearly as the expert company and technology provider for the robotized fiber placement.

Thanks to confidence of its early clients, mainly Airbus and tier suppliers, the Coriolis Composites team is now staffed with 45 people. The founders, still in control of the financial side keep their enthusiasm in developing a unique company aimed to provide expertise and technology.