Fiber Patch Placement - preforming for complex fiber components
Enjoy a new freedom in fiber orientation that perfectly fits and enhances your product. Defined pieces of carbon fiber, so-called patches, are automatically cut from a spread tow and precisely positioned as desired.
Your benefit: Similar to 3D printing, your component is additively, flexibly and completely automated generated from fiber patches. The individual orientation of each patch according to the stress in the component significantly improves the mechanical properties such as stiffness and strength. Therefore, patch based fiber structures can reduce the weight of your products significantly while increasing exactly those mechanical properties that you actually desire in your part.
This makes Fiber Patch Placement a milestone for complex composites in large volumes.
The process at the example of SAMBA Pro
1 | Feed carbon fiber tape
2 | Cut carbon fiber tape into patches
3 | Inspect fiber patch quality
4 | Pick up patch, check patch position
5 | Position patch on 3D preforming tool
Flexible patch gripper
Your key to an automated process for complex shapes is Cevotec’s form-flexible patch gripper. The gripper adapts to the most complex surfaces. Even over 90° angles and bi-axially curved surfaces, patches are placed precisely and without draping effects. The robot axes in the SAMBA production system ensure that the gripper reaches every point also in your most complex components.
End-to-end automation
After preforming, the full process automation continues. An additional robot detaches the inherently stable preforms automatically from the tool and transport them to the next processing step. This automation boosts not only your productivity, but also your volume on the shop Floor.
Perfect fiber orientation
If the fibers in a composite component do not align to the load, the drop in mechanical properties is enormous. Already a deviation of only 15 degrees between load and fiber direction reduces the relative fiber strength by over 80%.
You can leverage the full advantage of the fiber strength with Fiber Patch Placement, as patches can be perfectly aligned to the curvilinear load paths of a part. This leads to a significant increase in strength and stiffness of components. Scientific experiments demonstrate an increase of up to 150% of mechanical properties compared to conventional fiber structures like quasi-isotropic or biaxial lay-ups.
You like to know more? We are happy to discuss the results with you – and how you can use them to your advantage. Please contact us!
Your contacts
You got questions? Contact one of our specialists for an individual consultation.
Felix Michl
Chief Technology Officer
+49 89 2314 165 11
felix.michl [@] cevotec.com
Dr. Neven Majic
Executive Vice President
Software Technology
+49 89 2314 165 31
neven.majic [@] cevotec.com