Solution for Dry-Fiber-Placement with a Standard Articulating Robot System

Recent changes in the aircraft production process forces us, as a supplier of aircraft assembly equipment, to design innovative and modular manufacturing equipment that complies with modern specifications. This is especially true of composite manufacturing processes in combination with new materials that are now under development. In some applications, the potential for optimizing existing manufacturing processes (e.g. Prepreg-technology) as related to quality improvements and cost reduction has reached their limit. Using optimized production processes like preforming and resin infusion could allow one to achieve considerable benefits.

This paper describes the latest development of a robot cell for dry fiber placement. Our customer's application required a completely new type of end-effector and an extension of the proven high accuracy robot positioning system. This solution demonstrates the automation potential for economic quality and throughput improvement using a standard robot in conjunction with a new end-effector technology developed by BROETJE-Automation.