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Development of the autoclave forming aluminum (AFA) process has advanced current technology of age forming. Using an autoclave for application of aging heat and forming pressure, the process has been used to form 50 feet long, 2124 and 2419 aluminum wing skins containing integrally machined stiffeners and varying in thickness from 0.1 to 2.5 inches with thick pads in the middle of thin sections. The process produces smooth contours with no visible evidence of abrupt changes in thickness. The skins are believed to be the largest and most complex parts ever to be age creep formed in the history of the aircraft industry.

With an increased use of composite materials within the aerospace industry follows a need for rational and cost-effective methods for composite manufacturing. Manual operations are still common for low to medium manufacturing volumes and complex products. Manual operations can for example be found in material handling, when picking prepreg plies from a cutter table and stacking them to form a plane laminate in preparation for a subsequent forming operation. Stacking operations of this kind often involves a great number of different ply geometries and removal of backing paper and other protecting materials like plastic. In this paper two different demonstrator cells for automated picking of prepreg plies and stacking of plane laminates are presented. One demonstrator is utilizing a standard industrial robot and an advanced end-effector to handle the ply variants. The other demonstrator is using a dual arm robot which allow for simpler end-effector design.

The Aerostructures Corporation has realized significant reductions in the number of work hours required to create surfaced, 3D wireframe CAD models of aerospace structures and tooling through the use of knowledge based engineering (KBE) and generative design models.