Automated Lamination of Production Advanced Composite Aircraft Structures

One of the principal manufacturing benefits of using advanced composites is the reduction in the number of parts needed to fabricate an aircraft structure. To realize the full potential of this benefit, however, the number of manual handling operations required to build-up a large laminate from many smaller plies of uncured material must be significantly reduced. This paper will describe a system which has demonstrated that an automated approach to advanced composite lamination can dramatically increase the productivity of advanced composite aircraft structures.