Composites Manufacturing

Mechanical Engineering Internship — Levanta Technologies · Summer 2026

The finished full-length carbon fiber bottom skin standing beside its red mold
Trimmed carbon bottom skin test-fitted on the drone hull outdoors

The finished full-length carbon bottom skin beside the mold it came off, and the trimmed part test-fitted to the hull the same day.

Overview

During my internship at Levanta Technologies I spent nine weeks on production composites for a maritime drone. A composite part starts two generations upstream: a plug (the positive shape, surfaced until it’s worth copying), then a mold cast over it, then the part — and I worked every stage of that chain. Over the summer I:

  • Prepped and sealed foam/3D-printed plugs, prepped them for release, and faired seams
  • Laid tooling gelcoat and built chopped-strand fiberglass molds in box forms
  • Wet-laid carbon into the finished molds
  • Vacuum-bagged parts, making pleats when necessary.
  • Demolded and trimmed cured parts
  • Helped take the vehicle’s full-length carbon bottom skin from a primed plug to a hull-fitted part in about eight days, reducing total craft weight by 5%

Goals & Requirements

  • Build the tooling first: plug → mold → part 
  • Defect-free mold surfaces. Any flaw in the plug is copied into the mold and then into every part off it
  • Fully consolidated laminates. No trapped air in corners, no bag film bridging concave features
  • The full-length bottom skin laid up in one shot, inside a single working pot life
  • Trimmed parts that fit the vehicle

Foil and strut parts

On the smaller foil and strut parts I worked the full chain. Each starts as a machined foam plug, sealed and taped for release, with a female mold built over it in a box form: tooling gelcoat first, then chopped-strand mat wetted out and rolled to chase air out of every corner and radius. Trapped air there becomes a void in the mold face, which becomes a bump on every part off that tool.

White machined foam plug on a workbench before mold preparation

3D Printed plug

Roller consolidating wet chopped strand fiberglass in a box mold form

Rolling the mold laminate for consolidation

Gloved hands laying wet carbon fiber cloth into an orange female mold

Wet-laying carbon into a female mold

Cured composite part being lifted out of its red female mold

Bag preparation

I worked to ensure quality fabrication of the plugs, molds, and eventually parts.

The bottom skin

The capstone was the vehicle’s full-length carbon bottom skin. The plug was primed and faired, then a full-length fiberglass mold was laid up over it and stiffened with wooden ribs so a tool that size wouldn’t flex.

The full-length plug with its initial primer layer, photographed at night

Plug primed and faired, into the night

Laying fiberglass over the full length plug to build the mold

Glassing the mold over the plug

The finished orange full-length female mold in its stiffening frame

Finished mold, rib-stiffened

The skin itself went down in one shot: every carbon ply wetted out, draped, bagged, and drawn down inside a single working pot life.

Carbon fiber cloth laid into the full length mold

Carbon going into the mold

Constructing the red vacuum bag around the full length mold

Building the bag: tape, film, pleats

Vacuum bag laid over the full length mold and drawn down

Bag laid on and drawn down

The part was demolded the next morning, trimmed to its net edge, and test-fitted to the hull the same day.

The cured black carbon skin sitting in the opened red mold

Cured skin

The trimmed full length carbon bottom skin outdoors on the grass

Trimmed to its net edge

Outcomes

  • Nine weeks of production composites across the full plug → mold → part chain
  • The full-length carbon bottom skin: primed plug to a demolded, hull-fitted part in about eight days
  • Multiple foil and strut molds and parts through the complete layup–bag–demold–trim cycle

Scope note: this was hands-on process work — the layup schedules (ply counts, orientations, overlap strategy) were specified by others; I executed them.


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