The Smart Gripper concept

At the heart of Cevotec’s mission to redefine automated production for complex composite parts lies the development of the Fiber Patch Placement (FPP) gripper technology. Supported by a dedicated R&D team, over a decade of hands-on expertise, and a portfolio of patents, we are relentlessly driving innovation in fiber placement to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

The cevoGripper:
At the heart of FPP technology

At its core, the gripper is a form-adaptive placement tool, designed to conform to a target mold surface and precisely drape fiber patches onto complex 3D surfaces. It is the gripper end effector that makes the Fiber Patch Placement robotic lay-up process appear so straightforward and easy. Small and agile, as compared to more bulky placement heads of other technologies, the gripper is the crucial element for a precise and high-quality lay-up result.

Yet making something look easy is often the result of exceptionally hard work and practice. While the principle behind the gripper may appear simple, developing a reliable and highly effective conformable end effector is far from straightforward. A well-conceived design creates the basis for a very broad range of versatile applications. Like master craftsmen, our engineers have perfected the gripper design over the years, gaining deep material expertise and understanding the complex interactions between the gripper and the fibers it places.

The basic design can be further enhanced with a variety of customized features that allow composite manufacturers to automate processes that were once the exclusive domain of manual lay-up.

The key performance indicators for which we optimize our grippers are the following:

Endurance: Capable of up to one million placement cycles before significant wear.
Multi-material application: Adaptable to handle a wide range of materials, including carbon, glass, prepreg, dry fibers, and film adhesives.
Manufacturing precision: Enables highly accurate placement within tight tolerances.
Adjustable, high compaction pressure: Delivers exceptionally low material porosity. Can be adjusted based on specific requirements.

What is smart about grippers?

By calling it ‘smart,’ we highlight that the gripper is not a static, one-size-fits-all component of your FPP production system. Instead, it can be highly adapted to the specific requirements of your applications: highly flexible for manufacturing diverse products, extremely durable for long production runs, or featuring an ability to handle challenging materials. cevoGrippers conform not only with complex shapes, but also with complex requirements.

Let’s explore the key aspects of our Smart Gripper concept.

Tailored stiffness

The gripper can be designed with an application-specific stiffness distribution across its body, enabling it to adapt to both convex and concave tool geometries. This ensures a more uniform compaction force on the fiber patch, significantly reducing the need for intermediate debulking steps.

Variable suction zones

Gripper can feature an specific array of suction zones distributed strategically across its body. These zones can be individually controlled to accommodate the specific application and placement needs, allowing also large grippers to handle smaller patches with precision. This decreases in-production gripper swaps and further boosts productivity.

Tailored sizes

We’ve successfully scaled the sizes of our gripper family by factor 50x over the last years, and we further develop customized sizes to enable new applications, like reinforcing domes of large-diameter vessels. For an individual application, we typically target only one or two gripper sizes to keep productivity high. Different gripper sizes become necessary when size or geometrical complexity change by an order of magnitude, which often is the case across different applications that fit the production envelope of SAMBA systems. Our current portfolio ranges from credit card-sized (60 x 40 mm) grippers to DIN A4 (300 x 200 mm) dimensions, with the capability to scale even larger.

Active deformation (patent pending)

While tailored stiffness covers the majority of applications, certain high-complexity geometries demand even greater form flexibility. This is where the Active Deformation feature comes into play. The gripper can actively conform to the target geometry, allowing our SAMBA production systems to lay down long fibers across intricate shapes. When combined with a tailored bottom surface architecture, common automation challenges – such as handling, first-ply placement, drapability, and vision quality inspection – are effectively mitigated.

Take the next step

Ready to transform your complex composite lay-up processes and automate with Fiber Partch Placement? Contact us today to learn how the Smart Gripper can enable the automation of your specific lay-up challenge!

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