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Recent changes in the aircraft production process forces us, as a supplier of aircraft assembly equipment, to design innovative and modular manufacturing equipment that complies with modern specifications. This is especially true of composite manufacturing processes in combination with new materials that are now under development. In some applications, the potential for optimizing existing manufacturing processes (e.g. Prepreg-technology) as related to quality improvements and cost reduction has reached their limit. Using optimized production processes like preforming and resin infusion could allow one to achieve considerable benefits. This paper describes the latest development of a robot cell for dry fiber placement. Our customer's application required a completely new type of end-effector and an extension of the proven high accuracy robot positioning system.

Manual drilling and Lockbolt installation in carbon fiber structures is a labor intensive process. To reduce man hour requirements while concurrently improving throughput and process quality levels BROETJE-Automation developed a gantry positioning system with high performance multi-function end effectors for this application. This paper presents a unique solution featuring fully automated drilling and Lockbolt installation (inclusive of automated collar installation) for the vertical tail plane (vertical stabilizer) of large commercial aircraft. A flexible and reconfigurable assembly jig facilitates high access of the end effectors and increases the equipment efficiency. The described system fulfils the demand for affordable yet flexible precision manufacturing with the capacity to handle different aircraft model panels within the work envelope.