Robotic die-less forming strategy for fiber-reinforced plastic composites production

Abstract

Fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP) production in many cases involves expensive molds, which especially hinders cost-effective production of small series and prototypes. In metal parts production, incremental sheet forming (ISF) is an established process for creating individual parts and small series through a flexible and die-less process. Establishing a similar process for FRP is desirable but challenging, as deformation mechanisms of endless FRP differ significantly from metal sheets. Using just two movable standard tools, bending and shear of woven fabric needs to be realized. Thus, determining feasible forming paths of the robot guided tools for the desired geometries is one of the biggest challenges. In this paper, we propose a forming strategy for highly automated and flexible die-less FRP production based upon the theoretical background of draping mechanisms. We investigate the strategy in a basic experimental setup, generating a hemisphere and tetrahedron.