JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #84 - October 2013 - 52

services
- a station for automatic insertion of
the laminate into the clamping frame
by the robot,
- an infrared heating station (all from
FPT Robotik GmbH & Co.KG,
including automation and
programming), and
- a hydraulic injection moulding
machine (KraussMaffei KM 300
1400C2, 3000 kN clamping force)
with controls for the hot-runner
system and core pulls as well as
interfaces to the robot and
temperature units.
Fig. 2: Basf has developed its own multi-functional
test part: the so-called CIFO part (derived from
combination of in-mold forming and overmolding)
makes it possible to investigate continuous-fiber
reinforced composite parts for volume production
in the manufacturing cell

laminate and overmoulded material,
«stitch elements», i.e. locations in
the laminate through which material
is injected, and a carrier with a ribbed
U-profile. The CIFO parts are completely overmoulded and require no
further processing or post-moulding
finishing operations.
The mould (from Georg Kaufmann
Formenbau AG) used to produce
CIFO parts is highly flexible through
the use of interchangeable inserts,
e.g. to investigate the limits of forming a laminate. The mould is further
designed to allow simple and precise
handling of the laminate by means of
a clamping frame, that releases the
laminate in a controlled manner as
the mould closes.

New manufacturing cell with
six-axis robot for composite
development
In addition to conveyor belts, a magazine for the cut-to-size laminates and
a manual loading station for specialcut inserts, the manufacturing cell
set up in Ludwigshafen for near-realworld production of continuous-fibre
reinforced thermoplastic composite
parts consists of:
- a six-axis robot as central element,

Fully automated process, high
degree of simultaneity, short
cycle time
The process sequence in the new
composite manufacturing cell offers
a high degree of simultaneity for the
shortest possible cycle time. This
means that three clamping frames for
laminate handling are used simultaneously in the cell. An individual
clamping frame passes through the
following steps:
- inserting the laminate into the
clamping frame,
- heating the thermoplastic laminate,
- loading the clamping frame into the
injection mould,
- forming (draping) and overmoulding the laminate,
- removing the clamping frame and
finished part,
- placing the part on the conveyor and
the clamping frame on the laminate
insertion station.
While one of the clamping frames is
in the injection moulding machine,
the second frame holds the laminate
in the IR oven (up to 250°C) and
the robot inserts a new laminate in
the third frame. The robot inserts
the laminate into the clamping frame
automatically with high precision and
reproducibility. The gripper arm is
equipped with suction cups that enable it to insert the laminates carefully and remove the parts, in addition
to handling the clamping frame.

52 jec composites magazine / No84 October 2013

Several trials have demonstrated that
cycle times of one minute can be
achieved with this manufacturing cell,
the equivalent of a standard injection
moulding process. A major prerequisite for use of the process in high-volume production is thus satisfied.

Composite design with
a simulation tool
As the second part of the Ultracom
service package, the capabilities of
the Ultrasim simulation tool have
been expanded so that the behaviour
of components made from thermoplastic laminates with woven glass fibre fabrics or tapes and overmoulded
short glass fibre-filled polyamide can
be calculated and predicted reliably
through the use of integrative simulation methods. These simulation capabilities were first described and used
for the Opel Astra OPC seat shell.
The integrative simulation offered by
Basf incorporates the manufacturing
process into the calculation of the
moulded plastic part's mechanical
behaviour. Using rheological finite
element simulation of the injection
moulding process and 3D simulation
of the continuous fibre-reinforced
laminate draping process, the anisotropic fibre orientation at each
location in the moulded part is transferred (mapped) to the corresponding
region in the mechanical part. For the
regions reinforced with continuous
fibres, a completely new, expanded
numerical material description is
used in Ultrasim that accurately
considers the typical properties of
reinforced thermoplastic materials in
the mechanical analysis: anisotropy,
non-linearity, shear rate dependence,
tension-compression asymmetry,
temperature dependence and different kinds of failure.
Equally important as the exact
description of material behaviour at
each location is the design of the part,
i.e. correct selection and placement of
the reinforcing fibres and the semi-
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #84 - October 2013

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