Design and Analysis of Collaborative Automated Fiber Placement Machine

Abstract

The AFP machines have brought significant improvement on the manufacture of composite in terms of speed of material deposition, repeatability, good compaction, and reduction of waste But most AFP machines are designed for the manufacture of airframe components, which are usually shallow shells or tubes, and are not capable of handling some applications with more complex shapes. To be able to expand the manufacture capabilities of AFP machines in a simple and low cost way, it is necessary to increase the number of degrees of freedom of the robotic system.