IYRS Welcomes New Composites Technology Instructor, Henry Elliot

What drew you to the composites field?

Henry Elliot (HE): I had gone through an academic program in furniture design at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and I was in Rochester building studio furniture but thinking about boats. I wrote letters to all the boatbuilders I could think of and the only one who replied was Eric Goetz. So I moved here to Rhode Island to work for Eric. That was 1976. We were building cold-molded wooden boats, and right about that time, advanced composites were starting to be used for race boats. We built wooden boats as light as we could—vacuum bagging them with foam cores and honeycomb cores and thin cedar and mahogany skins. It became apparent that we couldn’t match the physical properties and performance of composite structures. So Eric started making the transition to composites. At the same time composite materials were just starting to be used for masts, rudder stocks, and other highly loaded parts of boats. So we set up another business, GMT, to build those kinds of parts. So that is how I got into composites—but in truth, it actually started when I was 15, building surfboards in the garage, during summers at the beach.

What was the field like in the early days of building boats with advanced composites?

HE: It was really interesting and a lot of fun figuring out how to use these materials, because previously most of them, particularly pre-pregs, had been used for aerospace where the shop conditions were very controlled. Aerospace had very expensive processing techniques, but boatshops weren’t like that ...We started building high-tech composite parts: pre-preg carbon parts, highly loaded, high-risk parts; the guys who were building those kinds of parts in the aerospace industry were building relatively small parts; a few square feet was big for them. Building a mast or—in Eric’s case—an 80-foot boat hull that was carbon-Nomex and cured all in one piece was a huge leap. Some of those aerospace people were shocked that we were trying it and that we were succeeding.

So marine composites back then were a new frontier?

HE: Actually, that’s true. We were building pretty nice parts with these exotic new materials using the resources we had at hand. Our first vacuum pump was a milking pump out of a local farmer’s dairy barn, and the ovens were often simple insulated tents heated with portable electric or gas salamanders. As we gained experience, we learned that the process monitoring and control equipment needed to be sophisticated; the tooling, ovens and heat sources could be simple and cheap. We definitely got the attention of the aerospace industry by building large one-piece advanced composite structures many times larger than they were, at a fraction of their cost. In fairness, a large part of the cost differential was associated with the R&D required to qualify composite airframe components that absolutely could not fail: you can’t jump in the life raft if something bad happens in the air. But I believe that our success encouraged them to build larger and larger aircraft parts.

The field is more advanced now, so will students in the IYRS program have the same fun solving problems with these materials?

HE: The processing technology is very well understood. There are tried and true conventional approaches, and we’ll look at them in the course. But all of those conventional techniques are “tools,” if you will ... When we talk about the pioneering aspects of using these materials to build boats, it is all problem-solving. Students will have the same challenge. They will have a strong foundation in the basics and will learn how to apply those tools creatively. I have always found the problem solving part of it to be the most interesting part of the process, regardless of the materials or the task.

What drew you to the job at IYRS?

HE: Teaching has always appealed to me. I have helped out engineering students from some of the local schools, URI and UMass/Dartmouth, with projects, and industrial design students at RISD. Those were very specific applications. But what is appealing at IYRS is that we are covering the entire process. I can draw on all of my experience, and that is very appealing to me. I also feel that passing on the knowledge is a useful thing to do, it really matters. And as far as I can see, there is no one else doing this in as much depth as IYRS is.

Who is the ideal student for this program?

HE: Curiosity is useful, and a certain manual aptitude is very helpful. Someone who has made things—made models, built something in the garage—is already down the road on that whole problem-solving piece. Maybe that person built a minibike or a dinghy and experienced the process of thinking they knew, when they started, how to do the job, but realized that half their ideas did not work—and they had to adjust and find ways that did work. I think that is very useful. In specific terms, a younger student might be one who has taken technical classes in High School, or maybe a student with AP chem or AP physics who is not particularly interested in going to engineering school. Another pool of people includes those who are in the industry and recognize that to move forward in their careers, they need to hone their skills and have a bigger toolbox.

Will the graduates of this program with the tools and the ability to use them in a creative way be valuable in the job market?

HE: Absolutely. The most valuable employee to have is someone who has the information about everything you are doing on the shop floor and who can tackle the problems without a huge amount of supervision, because it is almost always the case—at least when you are doing something for the first time, and even when you are setting up a production situation—that you may think you know how it’s going to go. But it rarely goes that way. So you need to adjust the process to what actually happens. Again, it’s problem-solving—and if you are in a situation where you are making custom parts, that ability is absolutely critical.

Is this a good time to go into the field of composites?

HE: Yes. There are a number of problems we have to solve: energy issues, transportation issues, infrastructure issues. People talk about the green economy, and a lot of the pieces of that economy have good composite solutions. With automobiles and transport, one of the ways to make them more efficient is to make them lighter; composites can play a role in that. The same thing with infrastructure; there are already good, interesting applications where carbon and glass and other synthetic fibers are being used in the building trades—replacing steel and creating structures that are longer lasting and safer in unusual and extreme conditions, such as earthquakes. There is alternative energy, with tens of thousands of wind turbine blades being built, and changes in the style and design of these turbines. There are medical prostheses. I don’t think the applications are endless, but there is a huge amount going on and the people who have the tools to solve these problems are going to be in a very good position.