CompositesWorld

JAN 2018

CompositesWorld

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NEWS 17 CompositesWorld.com Automation Initiatives efficient manufacturing method, then Airborne takes over part production. Phase 2 involves analysis of the part's manufacturing process to identify quality-critical steps and develop a plan for automated and digital manufac- turing, with input from equipment and software partners KUKA (Augsburg, Germany) and Siemens Nederland NV (The Hague, The Netherlands), respectively. During Phase 3, production is shifted to a new, qualified automated line, located either at Airborne's facility, at the customer's facility, or at a subcontractor's manufacturing site. Says Kremers, "We have set up a Field Lab called Digital Factory for Composites, part of the Dutch Smart Manufacturing Initiative, to implement Industry 4.0 for composites with our partners Siemens, KUKA, TU Delft [Delft, The Netherlands] and, more recently, materials supplier SABIC [Sittard, The Netherlands]." A representative example of Airborne's approach is a fully automated process for picking, sorting and placing composite plies, introduced at the AIRTEC 2017 trade show. The solution reportedly can be integrated with any auto- mated flatbed or conveyor-type cutting machine to reduce cost and labor time required to convert composite rolls into sorted kits. Built around a KUKA robot and a camera system integrated with the end-effector, the robot takes up cut pieces as directed by the kitting system programming, and automatically sorts them into kits: "It's one integrated cell. No human labor is needed to create the kit. The camera records the operation, and the code on each piece, and the program does the work. It provides full traceability for each kit." Kremers adds that the system is sophisticated: "For exam- ple, if you are working on four different shipsets of parts, each of which uses some of Material A, it is possible to nest and cut all four shipsets with Material A as one batch, which saves tremendously on material waste. The robotic system never loses track of which piece goes in which kit." He notes that the automated kitting system is advancing the adoption of advanced and dynamic nesting software strategies, which nesting software providers, such as Plataine (Waltham, MA, US), are promoting. Many more automated applications are in process, he says, although specifics can't be announced yet: "We are working on an end-to-end automated process flow for thermoplastic tailored blanks for aerospace, and have a low-cost, robotic multi-functional ATL cell for thermoset prepreg that also features pick-and-place for local patches and ultrasonic cutting, for example." LET'S CREATE SOLUTIONS. TOGETHER. www.unitech-aerospace.com 1 single injection part v. 16 part assembly No rivets or bonding v. 1,200 rivets and bonding Repeatable high tolerences Lightning strike protection in layup RTM G280 Rudder Torque Box Achieve higher performance, faster delivery and lower cost with North Coast, industry experts in RTM.

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