Electroimpact CEO Peter Zieve Introduces the Revolutionary AFP 4.0 System, Which Could Disrupt Manufacturing

Peter Zieve
2 min readJul 21, 2021

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Could the AFP4.0 portend major changes in the aviation industry? Electroimpact CEO Peter Zieve believes so. Here’s why.

The aviation manufacturing industry has largely been controlled by a few large companies. This is due, in part, to the high barriers of entry and high capital costs to enter the aviation market. Quite simply, manufacturing airplane components and assembling airplanes is extremely expensive. However, Electroimpact CEO Peter Zieve believes that his company’s revolutionary AFP4.0 manufacturing system could disrupt the aviation manufacturing industry.

“The AFP4.0 greatly lowers capital investment costs, which in turn makes it cheaper to manufacture certain aircraft components, in this case, the airframes themselves,” Electroimpact CEO Peter Zieve notes. “With the AFP4.0, you can manufacture airframes in smaller spaces and with less equipment without compromising the airframes themselves.”

The AFP4.0 system can be set up in small warehouses or large garages. Instead of needing tens of thousands of feet of floor space and multiple pieces of expensive equipment, you need only a few machines and limited space.

“The AFP4.0 system has been designed from the ground up to allow smaller manufacturers to enter the airplane manufacturing industry,” Peter Zieve shares. “We focused on lowering capital investments so that we can encourage more players to enter the market. This, in turn, could drive innovation and competition, which is good for airplane manufacturers and customers alike.”

The AFP4.0 system is also easy to use with minimal intervention and reworking needed. Quite simply, the AFP4.0 system often gets the job done right the first time. The AFP4.0 system can ultimately increase productivity by up to 8 fold.

Productivity per employee may greatly increase with the AFP4.0 system, allowing even small operations to quickly achieve greater productivity. Lower utility costs also help lower overall production costs.

“In the past, airframe manufacturing typically required large production facilities, multiple machines, and a large staff,” Electroimpact CEO Peter Zieve points out. “If you didn’t have the resources to build all of that from the ground up, you’d struggle to break into the industry. The AFP4.0 system changes the dynamic.”

Electroimpact CEO Peter Zieve Discusses AFP4.0’s High Efficiency and Reliability

The AFP4.0 system isn’t simply small and cheap. While those metrics are important, so too are quality and reliability. The production standards required in the aviation industry are sky-high, but the AFP4.0 system can reliably hit even the most stringent quality standards without manual intervention.

“The AFP4.0 system can achieve the high-quality standards required in aviation 99+ percent of the time without any manual intervention,” Electroimpact CEO Peter Zieve says. “Not only that, but it’s a reliable system too, with less than one process error per maintenance intervention.”

The AFP4.0 system also offers high performance with lamination time reduced by a factor of 2. Depending on the part, utilization gains also increase by up to 3 to 6 fold.

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Peter Zieve
Peter Zieve

Written by Peter Zieve

Peter Zieve founded Electroimpact in July 1986 after receiving a Ph.D. degree from the University of WA in Mechanical Engineering.

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