My Reflections on SAMPE 2025 Indianapolis

#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfiber, #SAMPE2025, #compositesindustry

As promised with my last post, I was at SAMPE in Indianapolis all week last week.  I went there with some colleagues from work as well as one of our business partners, and we toured the show floor and attended a few of the pertinent sessions.  All in all we had a very successful conference and got to meet with the right people to help us out with the project we are working on. 

Entrance to the Conference

As I wrote last week, this year at SAMPE was not as well attended, nor did it have as many exhibitors as in previous years, largely because of the travel restrictions that have been put in place for non-citizens by the current Administration.  Since SAMPE is an international organization, the attendance both by non-US citizen attendees and non-US companies in the exhibit hall was down from previous years.  Hopefully those restrictions will be lifted before SAMPE comes around next year.  SAMPE 2026 is in Seattle, so hopefully it will be even better than this year. 

That being said, SAMPE was a great conference this year, and the exhibitors showed off lots of new and interesting stuff.  The majors were there, Toray, Hexcel, Syensqo, etc. for fibers and prepregs, Electroimpact and others for tooling and machinery, Airtech and others with fabrication supplies like vacuum bags, release agents, etc., and quite a few others with specialty products and services on display. 

And of course there were several receptions and gatherings at the conference as well.  Most of these were on the Exhibits floor.  There were also a couple of food vendors in the Exhibit hall as well. 

Fellows and Past Presidents Coffee Hour

The papers presented at this SAMPE conference showed a few new focus areas.  Two stood out to me when I was there.  One was a focus on the hydrogen economy and how advanced composites and Type 4 and 5 COPVs (Type 4 are plastic lined and Type 5 are not lined except with a thin bladder) are enabling the hydrogen economy, especially in the over-the-road transportation sector.  These COPVs are made using carbon fiber and the process for winding them is well established.  So, some of the papers and also one of the panel sessions focused on how we are going to get these certified to Department of Transportation safety rules, while lowering the cost of the COPV itself.  There were presentations about automated winding facilities that just crank these things out as fast as they can.  The COPV fabricators and the companies that make the machines that wind the fiber over them were on full display both on the show floor and in panel sessions and paper sessions.  One thing that I noticed is that for the Type 5 COPVs, some folks have gone from a meltable wax mandrel to a fully collapsible metal mandrel.  Some clever design engineers came up with something that works really well as long as you are making hundreds of the same design COPV.  This is perfect for the heavy trucking industry because there needs to be a standard size for the Hydrogen COPVs that mount right behind the cab of the truck.  What I saw was a concept with three COPVs mounted across the width of the cab and stacked up on top of each other.  That makes all of the piping and fuel control system easy to put together and accessible to the driver or maintenance personnel. 

The other area that stood out to me was a solid focus on sustainability in the composites industry as a whole.  It appeared to me from what I heard at the conference that the major material manufacturers and composites fabricators are getting the message.  There were even papers about the use of plant based fibers and resins.  And interestingly enough there was also a panel discussion about sustainable materials for the sporting goods industry. 

Two of the panel sessions I attended were about sustainability in the industry.  One was about the recycling of composites fabrication waste.  I have talked a bit about this previously, especially the partnership between Hexcel in Utah and Vartega which is an EU based composite materials recycling company that specializes in carbon fiber composites.  A gentleman from Vartega was one of the panelists.

The other one, on Thursday, was about training future leaders in the industry about the cross-disciplinary skills required to meet sustainability challenges into the next century.  I was very pleased that this panel session was not only at SAMPE but also well attended.  The graduating engineers starting their careers in this industry need to learn just how multi-disciplinary the entire field of composite materials really is.  The successful ones will take this message to heart and learn enough about all of the required disciplines that they can lead the industry into the future. 

One featured speaker who hails from my Alma Mater, the University of Delaware, talked about closing the loop in the composites supply chain and where recycling and reuse will fit in the supply chain for composites in the future.  Apparently the University of Delaware’s Composites Manufacturing Center is beginning to make a major focus on what to do with both fabrication scrap and end of life composites.  It’s good to see that they are focused on this since it is the focus of my second book that will be coming out this fall. 

Even the venue (picture above of the Indiana Convention Center) was nice and was connected by skybridge to several large hotels.  The JW Marriott was the conference hotel and it was easy to get from the hotel to the Convention Center, even in the rain which there was quite a bit of during the conference. 

And of course the Indy 500 race was the Sunday after the conference.  Alex Palou won it rather than Pato O’Ward who came in 4th overall.  The fun thing for me (confession to make – motorhead here) was to see some older Indy cars on display in some of the hotel lobbies. There was a 1928 Ford that apparently made it most of the 500 miles before having some steering issues.  It was front wheel drive and the automotive industry hadn’t gotten all of the kinks worked out yet for front wheel drive cars.  The other one was an Indy car from the early 2000’s that looked a lot like current Indy cars.  I didn’t spend much time looking at that one but it was really cool to see the actual cars and what it might be like to drive one.  The cockpits of these things are pretty spartan, with just the controls and gauges that are necessary to drive it and know what your fuel status, oil pressure, and engine temperature are.  Oh, and there is a speedometer as well.  Not much else for creature comforts.  These things must be a real blast to drive for about the first 50 miles or so, but they are probably not exactly the kind of car you would want to drive 500 miles in.  I guess the drivers have to be in really good shape.  It’s no wonder there aren’t any drivers much over 40. 

That’s about it for this week.  As always, I hope everyone that reads these posts enjoys them as much as I enjoy writing them.  I will post this first on my website – www.nedpatton.com – and then on LinkedIn.  And if anyone wants to provide comments to this, I welcome them with open arms.  Comments, criticisms, etc. are all quite welcome.  I really do want to engage in a conversation with all of you about composites because we can learn so much from each other as long as we share our own perspectives.  And that is especially true of the companies and research institutions that I mention in these posts.  The more we communicate the message the better we will be able to effect the changes in the industry that are needed. 

My second book, which should be out in the fall, is a roadmap to a circular and sustainable business model for the industry which I hope that at least at some level the industry will follow.  Only time will tell.  Since my publisher and I have finally come to agreement about the title for my next book, our daughter has been kind enough to put together a draft of the cover of the book for them to use to come up with a final version.  So, I’ve included the approved cover at the end of this post as promised.  Let me know whether or not you like the cover.  Hopefully people will like it enough and will be interested enough in composites sustainability that they will buy it.  And of course I hope that they read it and get engaged.  We need all the help we can get. 

Last but not least, I still need to plug my first book, so here’s the plug.  The book pretty much covers the watershed in composites, starting with a brief history of composites, then introducing the Periodic Table and why Carbon is such an important and interesting element.  The book was published and made available last August and is available both on Amazon and from McFarland Books – my publisher.  However, the best place to get one is to go to my website and buy one.  I will send you a signed copy for the same price you would get charged on Amazon for an unsigned one, except that I have to charge for shipping.  Anyway, here’s the link to get your signed copy:  https://www.nedpatton.com/product-page/the-string-and-glue-of-our-world-signed-copy.  And as usual, here are pictures of the covers of both books.