Group 15 recommends that the engineers AFRL conduct this type of small scale manufacturing in house. This would allow them direct control over each part. With a manufacturer, if a minor change needed to be made, the engineers would have to develop a new contract with the manufacturer. In house, the change could be made immediately. In order to move toward this type of production, Group 15’s sponsors visited the composite manufacturing lab to get hands-on experience with the vacuum infusion process. Figure 12.1 below shows Lieutenant Joe Czabarnek and Mr. Jeff Wagener of AFRL positioning a piece of carbon fiber in a mold at the composite manufacturing lab. Figure 12.1: Sponsor Visit Group 15 also suggests that AFRL research the possibility of vacuum forming of polymers. Some polymers can provide very strong, light parts. In this process, sheets of material are heated and spread over a mold using vacuum. The parts can be used after cooling. This is much faster than the curing time of most resins. Many polymers can be chemically bonded which makes basically a continuous structure. Polymers would provide more elastic deformation before failure without sacrificing strength. This is possibly the most important aspect for AFRL. With the growing cost and lack of availability of composites, the low cost and availability of polymers may be useful in production.