- A Brief History of Dream - 


Dream originally started testing with room temperature epoxies back in January of 2003. It was quickly realized that these easy to use and somewhat affordable epoxies had limitations due to their low Tg (glass transition). A worst case scenario was considered. A customer using or allowing the black or dark-colored product to sit in the Sun. It would more than likely pass the Tg of room temperature epoxies, which can be as low as 120°F. As stated elsewhere on the Philosophy page, even moderate ambient temperatures of 70°F cause dark-surfaced materials to go above 160°F. This obviously goes well past room temperature resin's Tg and is the reason aircraft kits are never painted dark colors. Almost all kit planes are built using affordable room temperature resins (usually vinyl-ester or polyester resins, like those used in fiberglass domes) and therefore painted white to reduce the risk of delamination.


Once room temperature resins were determined to be inadequate, plans began for the lease of a space and the susequent fitting out of a dedicated composite shop. The shop is centered around elevated temperature resins, vacuum bagging, carbon fiber and sandwich core technology.
The biggest requirement for the shop would be a large oven. Dream's largest oven was fully upgraded in 2015 from 10,000 to 36,000 watts, as well as upgrading the blower to a unit 20x more powerful. The interior is 144" wide, ~75" deep and ~68" tall. The oven is processor-controlled through a closed loop, temperature sensor design that uses forced horizontal air flow. The oven can easy maintain a tight temperature tolerance of +/-1°F.
These dimensions where chosen for current and future projects. These include the handling of: long lengths of truss tubes, solid telescope tubes, complete OTA structures (up to 1.5m in size), enclosure subcomponents (domes, radomes, arched roll-offs and clamshell segments), etc.. The oven is also large enough to thermoform full size sheets of sandwich core materials, like 4'x8' honeycomb or foam.

 

- 66"x66" small work table -


 

Dream has grown from the first 1100 square foot shop into our third, 7000 square foot current shop, in Nazareth, PA. The current facility has all of the eminities that the first two facilities lacked, especially related to processing mirrors. With the 3-story building that we fully occupy we are vertically testing mirrors.
Our largest CNC can machine 5'x10' materials, which we use for everything from foam sandwich cores, to solid laminate carbon fiber, to the molds for our engineered glass mirrors.
 
We have grown from doing one or two main design and build responsibilities to an almost entirely vertical company. Capable of producing cutting edge optics, optical assemblies and full instruments. This has given us knowledge and abilities that are unique to Dream and is allowing us to create unusually stiff, unusually high performing instruments. Schedule a visit today.


Dream will continue to devote a great deal of effort toward Research and Development. The goal for Dream's R&D efforts is to find and then fine tune methods that meet it's own goals as well as Dream's client's requirements. Emphasis on low resin content products is one of the hallmarks of Dream. Pushing carbon fiber and other advanced composites into areas that have, to date, been underutilized is the second hallmark of Dream. Dream specializes in ultra lightweight, low CTE and high stiffness opto-mechanical structures and systems. We also produce structures for other industries, like subcomponents structures for UAV's, bio-medical, magnatometer housings, etc..


To learn more about advanced composites, click here.  

- Dream NEWS -


 

 
 


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