Automated end-to-end composite solutions for tape laying, fiber placement

The Fives (Paris, France) Composites & Automated Solutions business line specializes in providing highly automated end-to-end composite manufacturing solutions from lamination to demolding to increase productivity across the complete line. As industry partners, Fives provides customizable lamination, forming, inspection and curing solutions. With precision and performance at the heart of the company, Fives ensures minimal waste and maximum quality. 

The company’s automation specialism has led to the development of a range of customized automation solutions for diverse fields such as aerospace and biomedical engineering. This includes Cincinnati, Forest-Liné and Lund tape layer and fiber placement machines.

Cincinnati Viper fiber placement systems are claimed to represent the largest install base of fiber placement machines in the world. The Cincinnati Robotic Viper offers a solution for applications previously laid up by hand, including high reliability Cut/Add mechanisms, accuracy at high laydown rates and interfaces with a Digital Engineering Suite.

The Cincinnati SuperCharger is the next evolution in Fives’ automated tape laying (ATL) capabilities, providing fast and flexible flat tape lamination on complex courses and low contours. The SuperCharger is said to enable more than 99.9% Cut/Add reliability, on-head scrap management and cut on-the-fly speeds up to 1.8 m/s.

Fives also welcomes attendees to stop by to learn how its composites Digital Engineering Suite provides customers value throughout the design and production of composite parts — from CAD, through CAM and simulation and finally to fabrication with high-fidelity inspection and defect detection — thus creating a true digital twin.

One example of this is the advanced composites environment suite (ACES). This is Fives’ analysis, simulation and programming software for tape laying and fiber placement laminates. The tool set is used to prove part designs, maximizing composite manufacturing performance. Features include rapid evaluation of part coverage, collision detection and automatic avoidance, and the ability to evaluate fiber deviation, wrinkling, gaps and more.

Based on advanced optical coherence tomography (OCT), the composite optical automated surface tracking (COAST) suite integrates seamlessly into the AFP machine, collecting real-time inspection data without impeding performance. Designed to handle a wide range of composite materials and sensor incident angles for advanced quality assurance, it can create 3D maps of composites surface, achieve teal-time tow placement measurement and control and measures close to the compaction roller, minimizing optical variation.

Visit Fives at Booth 5L58.