AUTOMATED ASSEMBLY OF FIBRE PREFORMS FOR ECONOMICAL PRODUCTION OF HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPOSITE PARTS

The demand of the market and the application require innovative process technologies for fast, cost-effective and quality-driven manufacturing of components made of fibre reinforced plastics. The Bremen Institute for Engineering Design (BIK) is developing and improving machineries and process technologies for the automated handling of fabric parts. Beside resin infusion processes, the handling of angular flexible material has become an important task to improve part quality and process cycle times. As a result of the systematic development current handling devices and installed applications will be demonstrated in this paper. For the production of FRP-parts by resin infusion processes several handling strategies are possible. The prototypes of the effectors are implemented in a flexible manufacturing cell. The feasibility of the implemented handling systems is proven by experimental investigations.Copyright © 2007 by ASME