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- A Brief History of Dream - |
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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. |
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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. |
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- 66"x66" small work table - |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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.. |
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To learn more about advanced composites,
click here. |
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