Reis showcased its latest innovation at Composites Europe exhibition

Photo by Reis GmbH & Co. KG Maschinenfabrik

On the COMPOSITES EUROPE Reis proves once again that topics and materials of the future are already reality in the automation. The absolute will to innovate manifests itself in projects already put into practice for production of fiber compound materials in the automotive and aircraft industries. Reis takes a leading role in system integration and for multi-process solutions. A particularity of the installed solutions is the offline programming option which obtains the relevant data directly from upstream CAD/CAM designs. This reduces the programming expenditures on customer’s site and the production of new tasks will start faster.

Fiber compound materials – above all CFRP – are becoming more and more important. The end products are not only very rigid, but also excel by a minimum weight. These features are in great demand in the automotive and aircraft industries. While lots of manual work steps had been necessary in production in the past, the automation solutions from Reis now allow mapping of complete process chains.

For example, a robot at ACE Advanced Composite Engineering GmbH on Lake Constance for the first time in the mass production history of ACE enterprise fits CFRP structural components with required fastening bolts by an automated gluing procedure. A special challenge was the process safety and the accuracy of programming of asymmetrical, three-dimensionally bent parts. Each new version of components is transferred to Reis in the form of a 3D CAD data record to be programmed there via the offline programming applications ProVis and RobOffice. Besides this, the service includes the required 3D-measurement at the original component. In the process all bolt positions are checked by digital image processing.

The DLR (German Aerospace Center) also works with solutions from Reis for automation and linkage of manual processes for forming of CFRP components. Especially the handling of fabric cuts is an extraordinary challenge, since orientation of the layers and their disposition in the mold are decisive for the future product features.

Reis is mapping the following steps in automated manner already.

• Unrolling raw material
• Cutting
• Recognition of the cuts and their orientation (using vision system)
• Handling of cuts
• Layer structure with draping of fabrics
• Consolidation to a “pre-compound”
• Cutting and trimming
• Loading and unloading of the RTM process (RTM – Resin Transfer Molding)
• Joining by gluing processes
• Mechanical processing of end products

For more information, please visit http://www.reisrobotics.de.

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