Key Specifications and Features:

• Multi axis motion control
• Temperature control
• Cutting of the material
• Packaging of finished material into roll form
• Up to 30 inch wide off-axis web
• Inline slitting
• Place up to 24” wide unitape
• 0°lap, 0.040” gap
• Can overlay previously made tapes to make multi-ply webs
• Proven production rate of 50 lbs/hr

Situation:

Client is a Tier One manufacturer of primary structure aircraft parts supplied to an OEM aircraft manufacturer. They have a unique process for making the part in question but have a need to have a precise material configuration for the process to work efficiently and economically.

Problem:

The raw material provided by the various material producers such as Hexcel, Toray, Cytec et al are not furnished in a configuration that can be utilized to directly produce parts compatible with the client’s current process which causes the part manufacturer to incorporate a secondary process step, i.e. material configuration or conversion. Unidirectional composite tape is the mainstay of the composite fabrication industry. However, the reality that the fiber direction parallels the tape placement direction limits some applications. For long narrow parts and select other parts, productivity rates can be dramatically increased if off-axis tape can be placed. Like unidirectional tape, off-axis tape is supplied on a backing material and is slit to a precise width. However, off-axis tape has the fiber direction at a fixed angle with respect to the long axis of the tape.

Implication:

This additional step is costly in terms of increased manual labor, process step balancing, material waste, insufficient production, etc.

Solution:

Accudyne Systems, Inc. designed and built an off axis laminator that manufactured the laminate structure in a way that eliminated the manual conversion task in its entirety.

The off-axis laminator uses placement grade unidirectional tape to create off-axis tape with fiber angles from -30 to 90 to 30 degrees. Supply tape rolls of up to 24” wide can be handled. Output material up to 30” is created and can be slit on-line to create narrower webs. After slitting, the output material is wound on spools for later automated placement for part fabrication. Depending on the width of the supply and off-axis webs and the angle of the fibers, off-axis production rates range from 6 to over 15 feet per minute. Alternatively, material laydown rates are in excess of 50 pounds per hour.

In order to manufacture the desired laminate the machine had to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.By replacing the manual process it increased production rates by a factor of ten while improving product quality and reducing scrap rates. The process to develop the machine design began with a close examination of the existing process, the material, other downstream equipment and a full understanding of the final part. This analysis yielded a novel machine design and process embodied in a machine that now provides the client a disruptive competitive advantage in the manufacture of this class of parts This was made possible by several technological innovations. First, the table of this laminator utilizes precise movements, within .005”, while the material is held in place by a vacuum. Next, the ATL head which is placing up to 24” wide tape onto the table and previously placed vacuum-held material could apply the tape at ±30° and ±45° setting to the 0° table axis thereby automatically manufacturing flat laminate charges. These charges can then be used in a downstream process in which the material is used to make actual parts.