It might be a no-brainer calling out what our new products Automated Laminating Cell, Automated Honeycomb Potting and Automated Kitting have in common (indeed: to automate), but the added benefits of these 3 newly launched products might come as a surprise and are in many cases the real value driver.
Keep it simple
First that comes to mind when automating manufacturing, is the reduction on labour costs. For it’s true: manual labour is still very much the standard way of working in composites. However, just investing in automation to reduce labour does not always pay off. It depends of course on how expensive the automation is. The trick is to keep it clean and simple.
We have learned through the years to keep a close eye on the task you want to automate. It is much better to create machines that can do a specific task very well and keep the cost of automation low. By using standard, affordable robots that can switch end-effector easily and quick (within 1 minute), you can still create a system that can perform multiple tasks. Also, by adopting a modular, building-block approach the development is faster and more flexible, which will reduce cost if you are in constantly changing production environment.
Lower that material waste
Composite materials are expensive, so reducing material waste is a key value driver. The following three systems can help lower your waste:
- With Automated Honeycomb Potting, the filling of the honeycomb material is much more accurate and repeatable, reducing the over-filling that is the current practice. It saves you material but also avoids getting weight penalties from your customers.
- With its low CAPEX and low-cost end effects, the Automated Laminating Cell provides the opportunity to use smaller tapes, or to use multiple heads with different tape widths so that you only apply the material you need. This can lower the buy-to-fly ration significantly while still achieving the required output.
- The Automated Kitting system is used in ply cutting of composite material. To do this efficiently, nesting of the plies is a key factor. This efficiency can be increased by nesting over many products. Yet, there is one hurdle why clients typically don’t use this. Plies from multiple products come from the cutting table, making it difficult for the operator to keep track. The worry is that plies get mixed up and the wrong plies are used in a product. By automating this process, this issue is removed because the system will keep track of all the plies, no matter the number of products and the complexity of the nest. This opens the way for more efficient nesting, or even dynamic nesting, which reduces the material waste significantly.
What about quality?
The intuitive response to automation is: ‘Ah, then quality will improve because there is no manual labour anymore. Ehmm, yes and no. With manual labour there is typically a lot of implicit control of quality and humans are actually quite good in the interpretation of what is required and to adapt the process if needed, using direct feedback like vision and touch.
Putting that into machines that provide good quality output is actually not that easy. It requires making the processing know-how and quality requirements explicit and implementing the right control and adaption strategies. That is where to use our combined composite manufacturing know-how: to provide you not with ‘just a machine’ but an automated process, that truly reduces the cost of quality issues
Automate the engineering
Automation of the manual labour is one think, but a lot of cost goes into all the engineering and work preparation that is needed. Programming and setting up automated equipment can be a difficult and long task. At Airborne, we spend a lot of effort in automating the work-flow and engineering and are implementing this in all our systems. The robots are directly programmed, automatically, from the design input. And this can also be on-the-fly, using vision systems to recognise the material shapes directly. With two effects: it save engineering costs, but also provides much more flexibility in operational planning. The plant manager can now optimize efficiency on a day-to-day basis which can increase output and reduce cost and waste a lot.
Let us work with you
Which of these value improvement elements work best for you depends on your specific manufacturing programme. We know, because we have the same manufacturing challenges ourselves in our factory. But we can help you! If you have questions or want to more about our solutions, contact us and we can determine how much value these automation products can bring for you.
