Our MD team has done a great job - in mid-April we completed the prototype of our Agrilight project and we are proud of the result!
With a total weight of 795kg, we have achieved our goal of a weight saving of at least 400kg compared to the steel construction version - which was 1233kg.
The last few weeks in particular have often been a sweaty affair, but the efforts of the last few years and months have paid off, because the result is impressive. This would not have been possible without such a strong team, so a big thank you to everyone involved at MD Composites Technology and MD Flugzeugbau!
In addition, many thanks to the IFW of Leibniz Universität Hannover, the PuK of Clausthal University of Technology and KRONE Agriculture as project partners as well as Schill+Seilacher "Struktol" GmbH as resin supplier and consulting partner.
Above all, however, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection for making the TTP LB possible.
Afterwards, we travelled to the Hanover Trade Fair, where this showcase project was given a stage in the Lightweight Construction Pavilion.
We were able to impress many visitors on site and hold numerous discussions in which we were able to explain our motivations and the implementation of lightweight construction in the steel-dominated agricultural machinery industry. We also learned that we should have used green paint more sparingly - because many visitors only realised that the frame is really a self-supporting fibre composite structure in which steel parts were used almost exclusively as connecting elements to surrounding components after haptic inspection.
We are looking forward to the final project phase and thus to the validation of our development: installation in a maize chopper and subsequent testing on a hydropulser test stand at the beginning of 2025.