CompositesWorld
Issue link: https://cw.epubxp.com/i/930524
FEBRUARY 2018 38 CompositesWorld WORK IN PROGRESS » It's no secret to anyone involved in aerospace composites that production rates in commercial aircraft assembly lines anchored by advanced layup processes — automated fiber placement (AFP) and automated tape laying (ATL) — have been constrained by the necessity of careful visual inspection and verification after each ply placement. Often, rework also must be done, by trained special- ists, to meet quality assurance requirements. For a fuselage barrel or other large composite part that requires hundreds of plies, the impact of inspection and rework is significant. In a paper presented several years ago by Robert Harper of Fives Cincinnati (Hebron, KY, US) and Allen Halbritter of e Boeing Co. (Chicago, IL, US), based on data from a generic fuselage barrel laid up using an optimized AFP process, inspection and rework accounted for more than 60% of the total part production time. More recently, Todd Rudberg, senior engineer at Electroimpact Inc. (Mukilteo, WA, US), says manual inspection/repair activities typically constitute more than 30% of the time distribution for a part build. Over the past several years, much research and development has been devoted to finding a path to automated inspection using digital methods, to permit the overall aircraft production process to keep pace with the efficiency of today's AFP and ATL processes. Toward that end, aerospace composite parts are now being made by ATL and AFP machines equipped with onboard, automated inspec- tion systems. ATL/AFP machine suppliers have developed, and continue to refine, systems capable of Improving composites processing with automated inspection Automated, in-situ inspection bypasses the bottleneck of manual inspection. By Sara Black / Senior Editor Breaking the inspection bottleneck Electroimpact's automated fiber placement (AFP) head is shown here during production trials for the Boeing 777X carbon composite wing spar. On-the-fly inspection is expected to help production processes keep up with today's AFP/ATL systems. Source | Electroimpact