Chadderton Manufacturing - Honeycomb (1)

Avro were quick to see the potential in light alloy honeycomb sandwich construction techniques and were the first to develop a method to make honeycomb that could be formed into almost any shape, that can have almost any desired curvature in any direction and that could be formed to surprisingly small contours.
The sandwich consisted of a high strength facings and a low density core of comparatively low strength cellular structure bonded together with synthetic resin adhesives under heat and pressure.
The Chadderton factory made honeycomb using various materials, Aluminium Alloy, Stainless Steel, Nomex Paper, Kevlar and Carbon Fibre,

(Monochrome Picture - Top Left)
A typical Honeycomb sandwich panel.

(Monochrome Photograph - Bottom Left)
This photo from July 1958 shows a Honeycomb making machine loaded with an Aluminium Alloy roll. Rolls of any suitable material could be substituted.

(Monochrome Photograph - Bottom Middle)
Making the Honeycomb core, this machine was capable of making 1200 square feet an hour. Some finished blocks ready can be seen stacked to the operators right.

(Colour Photograph - Bottom Right)
A high strength Carbon Fibre facing/Nomex Core Honeycomb sandwich panel from the late 1980's.