The Usage of a Force Controlled Delta Manipulator for Composite Hand Lay-Up Fiber Placement Process

Despite the technological improvements in modern composite manufacturing, the hand lay-up technique is widely preferred which relies on the operator hand-skills. Moreover, automated robotics assisted machines have quite much costs, so experimental robotics researches have no chance to obtain these machines. The usage of additive manufacturing techniques can be easier and cheaper with respect to composite manufacturing. However, in this case there are some problems can be emerged which related with insufficient material strength. The most important issue in the hand lay-up procedure is that the pressure force to be applied across the surface must be applied evenly. Modern AFP (Automatic Fiber Placement) machines usually use a serial manipulator in this force control process. Serial manipulators are not as proficient as delta robots in applying the same force value across the entire working area. Due to their structure, delta robots can enable to apply more force in a smaller volume with less cost than their serial alternatives. In this study, it has been tried to explain what should be considered when using Delta robot in composite production made with a standard AFP machine. As a result of this paper, a new cost-effective and simple technique is represented about composite manufacturing which is easy to implement for those works on robotics researches.