HOW COBOTS BUILD TAILORED BLANKS: MATERIALS AND PROCESS QUALIFICATION FOR ADVANCED THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITES

Kurzfassung

Advanced carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics offer a great potential for aerospace applications by efficient and customizable processing via pick-and-place preforming and oven vacuum consolidation. However, omitting autoclave cycles and press-formed blanks bears the risk to produce parts with an insufficient degree of consolidation. In order to assure reliability a cobot-based test stand was developed to automatically produce customized laminate stacks of reproducible quality with defined ultrasonic spot welds. The laminates are subsequently vacuum consolidated in an oven and inspected by water-coupled ultrasonic testing. Material and process qualification was carried out with different prepreg and semipreg materials. The DLR Center for Lightweight Production Technology (ZLP) in Augsburg will give insight into the challenges and current work.