JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #117 - November/December 2017 - 29

Flexibility in automated composites lamination

Fig. 5:
AFP Robot

this type of flexibility is MTorres' new
FLU3D system, which introduced AFP
technology in the fabrication of A350XWB
wing skins, as can be seen in Figure 7.

Fig. 7: AFP Robot

Fig6: fabrication of
A350XWB wing skins

lighter and more efficient final part compared to a hot-formed spar. Up to 10 machines are working 24/7 at both factories
to produce back-to-back spars, i.e. using a
single mould. The machines produce spars
for both the left- and the right-hand sides
of the aircraft, thus minimizing tooling and
maximizing productivity.
The stringer AFP machine in Figure 3 is
also a good example of the productivity
and reliability of the newer generation of
AFP systems, as it produces a relatively
simple part (wing stringers) but the mere
number of events per day per tow (up to
3000 adds&cuts per tow per day) makes
its reliability rates extremely high for such
applications. In a typical working shift,
the operator may have 50,000 add and cut
steps, so it is important to have a very reliable system to avoid interruptions in production. The average mean time between
failure for MTorres AFP machines is 8000
adds to fail, and 40-50,000 cuts to fail.
With such a high productivity and reliability rate, it is easy to explain the company's
market success, with more than 45 AFP
units sold and installed in the last 9 years at
the most prestigious customers.
Flexibility
Flexibility can be defined as the ability
of a system to react in case of any change,

whether predicted or unpredicted. There
are two types of flexibility: machine flexibility (how many different parts you can
make) and routing flexibility (how many
different ways you can make a part).
Machine flexibility relates to the number of
different parts (shapes) that a system can
produce. MTorres' most flexible machine
is the robot as it can lay up any type of part.
As regards routing flexibility, multiple
machines perform the same operation on a
part, and the process is engineered to make
the part in a different way to reach the final
objective, which may be to reduce manufacturing time, material consumption, or
the man-hours required to produce a part.
Typically, this routing flexibility is applied
to large-scale production. An example of

Fig. 8: ATL Robot

Why is flexibility needed today? Let's consider aerospace programmes from the past
ten years. During the development of "old"
programmes (like the Airbus A380, A350,
Boeing B787, 777x), a huge investment was
required up front with machines designed
to conduct very specific operations, which
resulted in very specific machines performing very specific operations.
On the other hand, "new" programmes
(A330neo, A320neo, MOM, NSA) no
longer require fixed machines to perform a
specific operation. In fact, when customers
of any size (Tier1-2, or even OEM) have
to decide which machine they need,
they don't have a specific programme to
charge the cost of the machine, but several
undefined programmes among which they
spread the investment, so it is clear that
future machines have to be as flexible as
possible.
Flexibility in gantry and robot design
MTorres' flexibility in gantry design allows
the use of different types of axis configurations depending on the part to be laid up.
For instance, the company's machines lay
up the wing skin and the fuselage of the
A350XWB using different gantry machines
in order to customize axis travels based on
the application (machine customization).
But both designs have in common that the
head change is performed automatically
in less than 2 minutes, resulting in greater
flexibility.
The flexibility of a robot is inherent to its

Fig. 9: Dockable AFP head

N°117 November - December 2017

/ jec composites magazine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #117 - November/December 2017