Increased reliability of a robot tool for preforming dry carbon fiber textiles by enhanced measurement, heating system and communication

All the advantages of Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) make it primarily in the aerospace sector. However, the manufacturing of CFRP is not sufficiently automated until recently. The automation of the downstream manufacturing will not only remarkably reduce the costs but also make the manufacturing process more reliable than the insufficient automated manufacturing process. Therefore, automation of manufacturing CFRP is now an important issue. Due to this situation, the project "INSTRUKT" at the iwb Application Center Augsburg together with Eurocopter Deutschland GmbH was launching. A pick drape and activate robot tool for preforming dry Carbon Fiber textiles (one step of CFRP manufacturing) was designed. Although a pick drape and activate robot tool for performing Carbon Fiber textiles (CF textiles for short) was designed and a prototype had been built, it is still uncertain, whether this robot end-effector is trustworthy to fulfill the requirements of the automation process. In order to upgrade the reliability of the robot tool this thesis focuses on the validation and improvement of the robot tool from three aspects: a. Temperature measurement system b. Heating system c. Communication structure of the robot tool.