As more automation enters the fabrication process, new data infrastructure is required to guide that automation. Importantly, I believe, only those companies that build out their data infrastructure will be able to take full advantage of the automation technologies that are driving composites fabrication to new levels of efficiency and quality. This is true of automation technologies ranging from those that assist hand layup to those that complete entire fabrication processes.
Those mylar and fiberglass templates of the 1980s intermediated between the virtual CAD realm and the real world of component fabrication. Shaped to match a specific 3D pattern in a ply schedule, each template had to be lifted into place, carefully aligned and pinned to the tool. An operator then scribed the template’s outline. After removing the template, the operator could then lay up the ply. This sequence was repeated for each ply — often hundreds of times to build one component. Both painstaking and inflexible, this fabrication process also pitted throughput against quality; that is, raising the manufacturing rate almost inevitably reduced component quality.
Read the full article at CompositesWorld.com.