Book Description

Filament winding is a production technique for continuous fibre reinforced composite parts, in which impregnated fibre bundles are guided through a pay-out eye on a rotating mandrel. In the tape winding process a tape is used instead of separate fibre bundles. A computer-integrated environment has been developed round the winding process, including design, production and quality control. A program has been generated for the calculation of fibre paths on a part, which is designed in a CAD-system. A design methodology has been developed, which is not restricted to axisymmetric and almost-axisymmetric parts, but also applies to complete asymmetric parts. A robotic tape winding cell has been constructed, which consists of a PUMA-762-robot and two external axes : the winding axis, that rotates the mandrel, and the pay-out eye axis, which allows to maintain a constant band width. Starting from data of the fibre paths, a collision-free off-line robot program is generated. To avoid collisions, a heuristic collision control method has been developed. A tape wound T-piece has been designed and produced. For quality control, a robotic ultrasonic C-scanning cell has been constructed.