ACCURACY-SPEED RELATIONSHIPS OF A ROBOTIC FILAMENT WINDING CELL

Filament winding is a process in which tensioned resin-impregnated con tinuous fibers are placed on specified paths of a rotating mandrel to cover the entire surface thus forming a composite component. Tradition ally, filament winding is carried out on multi-axis numerically contro lled lathe-like machines. This paper describes the evaluation of a rob ot based filament winding cell consisting of an industrial robot (ASEA IRE 6/2) and an in-house fabricated mandrel drive mechanism, both bei ng coordinated by a personal computer. As in many manufacturing proces ses, tradeoffs exist between accuracy and speed. The accuracy vs speed relationships of the robotic winding cell were experimentally determi ned for discrete, fine and medium movement modes while traversing a se gmented delivery eye path for a cylindrical mandrel in three configura tions (in-line, offset and angled with respect to the axis of rotation ). The results show that the robot winding cell is appropriate for ver y accurate winding of fiber strands if the mandrel axis is concentric with the mandrel drive axis and the discrete mode (i.e. low speed) of the robot is used. For high speed wet winding all three configurations can be accurately wound in the discrete and fine modes.