Features:

• Carbon fiber/thermoplastic tape cutting
• 0/θ & 0/- θ Laminates
• On-line metrology measures material width in process
• 0 lap, 0.015” gap
• Heat staked or heated compaction
• Guillotine & ultrasonic cutters
• Cuts parallelogram sheets
• Adjustable fiber angle from 0-29°
• Places and heat tacks sheets together

Situation:

Thermoplastic resins provide good impact toughness but require special handling considerations. A customer needed a machine to produce 0/+Ө and 0/-Ө sublaminates that would later be cut and stacked to form a thick structure for ballistic applications. The client had a requirement that the ply orientations/laminates be manufactured at a desired rate and consistency with regard to final specifications.

Problem:

Manual labor could not maintain desired production rate or final product consistency.

Implication:

High cost to manufacture laminates manually.

Solution:

Accudyne designed and built a machine to manufacture the thermoplastic laminate structures. Critical to the final application was that adjacent plies had no overlap and a maximum gap of 0.015”. In order to achieve this high level of precision given the variability of the incoming product, the system was designed with on-line metrology to measure the width of the supply material as it was dispensed. The machine has two web paths. The 0 degree web path forms the base layer and is precisely incremented based on the measured width of the crossply patch. The second web path dispenses the off axis plies at adjustable angles from 30 to 90 degrees. Cross ply patches are measured, dispensed and cut to length. A pick and place system then transfers the cut patches and places them precisely on the 0 web. The patch is then heat stacked to the 0 web prior to indexing and placing of the next patch. Two machines were constructed to simultaneously from the 0/+Ө and 0/-Ө laminates.