Automation for Aerospace Parts

All major aerospace suppliers and OEMs expect that “green aerospace” initiatives will gain in importance and need to accelerate in the years to come. In addition to new propulsion technologies, it’s in particular lightweight construction that will play a major role as new aerospace programs are defined in the decade to come.

Automation is key to a widespread use of high-performance composites in next generation aerostructures, in particular when higher volumes are needed for e.g. single-aisle medium-range aircrafts. As of today, multi-material composite structures like fairings, radomes, nacelles, control surfaces still require a lot of manual worksteps in fabrication. Fiber Patch Placement (FPP) technology has the potential to change this. It offers a new combination of productivity, flexibility and costs and enables automation for complex 3D shapes, multi-material composites and locally load-adjusted fiber designs. This results in a remarkably improved buy-to-fly ratio. It’s the technology for the next generation of composites aerostructures.

For the precise placement of larger patches on strongly curved surfaces, we have equipped our SAMBA systems with the Rolling Motion feature. The 6-axis placement robot applies the patch onto the tool in a rolling movement, so that the gripper exercises a similar pressure across the entire patch surface during placement. The gripper size can be varied to maximize the throughput of the system; it features an automated gripper exchange station. The calculation of best contact curve can be performed by our dedicated ARTIST STUDIO software, which then also performs the offline programming of the robot via a digital twin.