Patent ID: 6841021

Claim:
A process for forming a tube clamp comprising the steps of: providing a plurality of fiber plies; layering the fiber plies in a layup tooling mold to achieve a predetermined thickness, the layering including the steps of: layering a first plurality of the plies along the contours of the layup tooling to form a bottom ply layer of predetermined thickness; layering a second plurality of the plies to a predetermined thickness to form a top ply layer; providing filler to fill regions in the mold between the bottom ply layer and the top ply layer; injecting resin into the mold; heating the fibers and the resin while applying pressure and curing to at least near net shape to form a composite; then removing the cured composite from said layup tooling mold while retaining the contours of said layup tooling without exposing fibers along the contours.