Markus Hildebrandt

Flexible Production of Thermoset FRP Components

Automation for Small Series Production Endless Fiber-Reinforced Plastics (FRP) are used in a wide variety of applications due to their outstanding potential for lightweight design. The production scope ranges from large series applications to manual, individualized parts with lot size one. The production of FRP parts in general is influenced by the increasing diversification and individualization of products. This desire for individualized production at low prices presents manufacturers with challenges in the areas of product development, process f lexibility and cost efficiency. Looking at the current FRP market, it becomes clear that despite the high growth rates in the field of thermoplastic reinforced

Quality Controlled UD Tape Production for the Individualised Production of Load Optimised Thermoplastic Composite Parts

A flexible and individual component manufacturing process for thermoplastic composites (TPC) has been developed at the Institut fuer Kunststoffverarbeitung in Industrie und Handwerk an der RWTH Aachen (Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV) at RWTH Aachen University). The process consists of a quality controlled tape production and a combined forming and joining process with additive manufactured functional structures. This paper describes the requirements for the unidirectional (UD) tape properties and the quality controlled tape production line in order to allow for a flexible and individual component manufacturing of load optimised thermoplastic composite parts. Besides the UD tape geometry and fibre impregnation quality an even fibre distribution over the width of the UD tape is an important characteristic. Results of investigations regarding the online measured quality data (fibre distribution) and offline measured UD tape properties (local fibre weight content) are presented and discussed.