Innegra Teaches Composite Work to Attendees
See live demonstrations at tent all week
By Ti Windisch, EAA Staff Writer
July 24, 2018 - Representatives from Innegra Technologies are teaching EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2018 attendees about working with their product in composites at the Innegra tent, located directly behind the Replica Fighters building on the grounds.
Innegra Director of Business Development Jen Hanna said the company’s chief composites engineer, Russ Emanis, EAA 837740, always gives demonstrations all week in Oshkosh, bringing attendees through the complete process of engineering composite parts.
“He’s been doing this for several years,” Hanna said. “He comes and puts on demos to help people learn a little more about advanced composites. There’s a lot to learn and he’s been in the industry for 40 years. We make a high-performance fiber that goes into composite material to help for impact resistance, lighter weight, and it prevents fracture propagation.”
As Emanis educated onlookers about the process of making correct composite parts, Hanna explained that Innegra’s product pairs with carbon to make a stronger composite.
“Innegra combines with carbon to help increase the performance by making it not such a safety risk,” Hanna said. “Every year Russ puts on these demos he’s building something: a float, a wing, a fuselage. And he’s using carbon and Innerga in these parts just to show how to work with it because it’s a little bit of a different material. It doesn’t have the properties of carbon, it doesn’t process exactly like carbon, and he knows all the tricks.”
AirVenture attendees who get out to the Innegra tent every day can watch the raw materials involved go all the way through the process into being completed parts, but Hanna said it’s perfectly fine for folks to drop in at any time to pick up some of the process.
“The whole purpose of him being here is for education and to help people understand, even if they don’t plan on building something, to understand how it’s built,” Hanna said. “It’s always kind of a cool concept to be flying in a plane and understand how it’s built.”
