America's Cup- Core Builders embraces the Composite Age - Part 1

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 12 May 2015 “We’ve had the stone age. We’ve had the metal age. Now we are starting the composites age,” says Tim Smyth, during a tour of Core Builders Composites in Warkworth.

An evangelist for composite construction, Smyth believes the New Zealand marine industry is underselling its capability, and also does not think laterally about the type of projects in which it should be involved.

Smyth is disappointed with the Kiwi media criticism of a Callaghan Fund Grant to the US owned company formed to build the 2010 America’s Cup Challenger for Larry Ellison and his sailing team Oracle Team USA.

Smyth doesn’t specify what the Research and Development Fund grant is for, but one area of the concrete floor of what used to be the printing hall of the Rodney and Waitemata Times, is being tested to check if it is strong enough to take another Hauss CNC milling machine that Core Builders have on the way. List price is close to the funding figure revealed by Core Builders Composites.

CBC have five of the CNC milling machines of various sizes, including one that is 18 metres long and the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere.

They are essential to allow Core Builders to bring computer-aided design (CAD) models into precise reality.

Over the phone, Smyth dismisses the media claim, and inference that the NZ Government-backed fund was subsidizing the construction of Ellison’s next America’s Cup Challenger.

“We have so much composite work, that we don’t need to bother about building yachts,” he retorts

Four days later, the media diatribe still rankles, and Smyth re-emphasizes his point as we enter the Core Builders Composites facility.

“This year we have done more work externally than we have done for our parent company”, he says clearly irked by inaccurate reporting. .

“People should be rejoicing because most of the work for the next America’s Cup is going to be done here in New Zealand, as happened last time.”

Originally set up on the West Coast of USA, the team relocated to Anacortes, and then New Zealand.

Core Builders built the prototype of the AC45 at Warkworth, and then continued to produce all of the wingsails and other vital components for the fleet of 12 Yachts, to ensure they met the 12 month deadline for delivery they subcontracted several NZ Boatbuilders and supplied them with molds and tools to produce various parts.

They built all the components for Oracle Team USA’s two AC72’s used in the 2013 America’s Cup – except for those components such as the hulls. Which were required by the rules to be built in the country of the Challenger.

“We’ve built more wingsails than any builder in the World,” says Smyth inadvertently making an interesting point.

For what is perceived externally as a yacht building company, there is not a whiff of a monohull yacht on display, or under construction. Instead, this is a workshop of multihulls, wingsails, foils, strange industrial shapes and architectural challenges.

Is this the ultimate man-cave?

It is the place where near impossible engineering projects are turned into reality. If an engineer can design it on a computer, CBC can probably build it – everything from 120ft trimarans to precisely turned parts that fit in a shallow drawer.

After the 2013 America’s Cup, team boss, Russell Coutts wanted Core Builders Composites closed down or mothballed, and then revived when required for the next Cup.

We were not interested in that says Smyth. “What are we going to do with these orders and how would we ever assemble a team like we have here again, having taken four years to put it all together?’ he asked Coutts.

“We’d previously decided to do some publicity and got an article into the prestigious Seahorse magazine and got a good PowerPoint presentation together describing our methods in detail,’ explains Smyth. “We got it out to various naval architects - and sure enough we got orders – lots of orders – lots of work.”

He rattles off a list of recently launched high-performance yachts for which Core Builders Composites have made various parts – mostly daggerboards and foils.

But they didn’t stop there - linking up with several leading New Zealand architects - including Pip Cheshire to work on a number of projects involving the construction of composite structures including the roof for the Marsden Cross Interpretive Centre.

“We did an amazing elegant stairway for a high architecture $12million house. It was a staircase that went up two stories, with massive footings. We suggested that it would be easier to build in carbon, but the architects wanted concrete.

“We even suggested that they paint the carbon so it looked like concrete. In the end we made $100,000 of mouldings that could be poured in concrete.”

Core Builders Composites produced a complex set of glassed polystyrene reinforced with wood and ply, all designed to clip together.



Working with the architects was not straight forward. “They aren’t working in true model space,” says Smyth.

Working in true model space is the key to Core Builders Composites business. The architects produce 2D CAD drawings and 3D rendering, but Core Builders Composites only work in digitized design utilizing 3D surface files. The CAD drawings are used as input to the software driving the CNC milling machines – and the design is replicated perfectly in the finished part. Reference marks are usually automatically incorporated to make easy assembly of interlocking or joining parts.

“In the marine composites industry the naval architects are generally working in true 3D model space. A lot of the other disciplines are behind us – and are not working in true-digital format so that their designs can be linked with digital production techniques.”

The key to the conversion process of true model space to the finished component are the CNC milling machines used to create parts and tooling – usually in the form of male plugs which become female moulds. A significant percentage of the effort in composite construction is in tooling – so the final product can be laid up.

In a few weeks, a Haas five-axis CNC milling is due to be installed.

Smyth picks up a part that looks like the top of a rudder stock. No photos allowed.

“This is one of the reasons we wanted a five-axis milling machine,” explains Smyth. This part took about two weeks on a three-axis machine, with four or five setups. If we did it on a five-axis machine it would take one setup and half the time to produce.”

He adds that it is not just the hardware that costs the money, but there is a big investment in training and $40,000 for the software to drive the systems, the maintenance contracts for the software run into thousands per year.

Smyth flips open what he calls the “million dollar drawer”. The shallow metal drawer is full of titanium parts. Some get bonded onto carbon tubes. Each comes off a milling machine.

Around the corner, there’s a daggerboard curing for Rambler 88. Smyth says they are worth app $400,000 per set – emphasizing the high value-add of the composites industry.

“We built these single sided – which is what we perfected with digital technology.

“We have a machine that cuts all the fibre accurately, using a sonic blade to cut the oblique angles of the Carbon uni directional. Then we have the IP to know how to build that tool to be heat stable. It must be able to do multiple cures and be relocated back into the machine exactly where it was last time.

“In the meantime it has been taken up to 90 degrees. At that heat things will warp and twist. Your tool has to be absolutely stable,” Smyth emphasises.

Because they have over-full order books, Smyth says that Core Builders have had to turn down a lot of requests for daggerboard construction.

He explains they developed the considerable IP for undertaking this type of extreme construction when they built the 120ft wingsailed trimaran for the 2010 America’s Cup. “We applied that into the AC72”, he adds

Around the next corner is the female plug for the front element in Oracle Team USA’s AC62 wingsail.

It is in two pieces. The male plug sits in the 18 metre CNC milling machine on the other side of the factory alley.

“We have all the tooling for an AC62 wingsail – which is going in the bin,” Smyth says with an air of resignation,

“It puts the lie to the people who think the Class Rule was changed to our advantage. We had already done the second sports boat to be different to the first so we could test for the AC62. But now the 48 is going to be one-design we will have to go back and get two boats that are the same.

“So we are going back and redoing what we have just done.

“This decision easily cost our team +$500,000 in real work, let alone design work.

“We had done at least as much design work as the other teams – but they’d done no production work on the AC 62”, he notes, we were ahead on wing tooling given our orders to supply wings to more than just one team.

Another short walk and we enter the AC45 reconstruction area.

“It’s common knowledge that the AC48 -or next America’s Cup Class is going to be based on our sports boat”, Smyth claims.