Alexander Pototzky

Automated Scarfing Process for Bonded Composite Repairs

Today’s bonded composite repairs rely heavily on manual grinding. The human influence on scarf tolerances and consequently on assembly and structural performance can be reduced by automating the process of scarf manufacturing. A process based on contact free surface scanning, surface reconstruction, automated repair design and automated milling of the repair scarf is presented. A machine and software design for validation purposes is described. Several repair specific design considerations relevant for the construction of a mobile scarfing machine are discussed. The redesign of a standard 3-axis milling machine to a mobile automated scarfing unit is presented and the architecture of the associated software framework is described. An outlook to future validation steps is given.