America’s Cup
The AC75s and AC40s are foiling monohull boats used in the America’s Cup. C-Tech engineered and manufactured the internal carbon fibre mast system, among sail hardware, clewboards, and custom battens accross the teams, delivering lightweight stiffness under high-load sailing conditions.
"C-Tech's flexibility in design and build, combined with a willingness to collaborate on ideas, helped in producing the best components for our needs, giving us the best results."
Project Overview
The AC75s and AC40s are foiling monohull boats used in the America’s Cup. C-Tech engineered and manufactured the internal carbon fibre mast system, among sail hardware, clewboards, and custom battens accross the teams, delivering lightweight stiffness under high-load sailing conditions.
Project Highlights
Challenge 01
Accuracy
The specifications America's Cup teams define in their FEM models and computer simulations of the sails is a lot more accurate than it used to be, which puts a lot more demand on us.
Solution
We have kept our design capabilities and software up-to-date and ensure the manufacturing processes are consistent with each individual product so we can produce the accuracy needed to keep up with the design requirements.
C-Tech has been involved in every America's cup event since then and has expanded from supplying battens to all sorts of other composite components including: foils, grinding pedestools, tubes, compression struts, hydraulic accumulators, fairings, wing control panels, sail corners, daggerboard cases, structural pods, bike frames, control arms and also helping with CNC services and autoclave curing.
Challenge 02
Time crunch
Custom America's Cup projects can be the hardest as they will not only have a time crunch but often are still be going through design changes after we have started manufacturing.
Solution
With state of the art projects - we expect these curve balls. We push our team to get started on projects as soon as we hear the word go, even with only half the information. We then rely on excellent communication internally and externally so any changes are made for the best possible result. Out team is committed to its customers so will put in the extra effort to make critical deadlines.In the 2021 America's Cup C-Tech has been proud supplier of sail battens to all the teams again as well as many tubular composites. This work is important to keep pushing our R&D program forwards.
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