“JEC World 2019 show was definitely a success for Cevotec”, said Thorsten Groene, managing director of Cevotec. “The newest SAMBA features and the showpieces, demonstrating the advantages that Fiber Patch Placement offers in particular to the aerospace industry, rouse high interest among the visitors.”
The main eyecatcher was a demonstrator section of a major component of an engine nacelle structure, made in cooperation with and for Safran Nacelles, demonstrating how Fiber Patch Placement handles multi-material lay-up of an aerospace sandwich component.
Felix Michl, CTO of Cevotec, added: “These components in the aerospace industry find their main applications in winglets, stabilisers (horizontal and vertical), flight control surfaces, radar domes, aerodynamic fairings and nacelle structures.”
All of them have to be lightweight yet resilient to meet the industry’s continuous strive for emissions reduction and greener aircrafts, supported by more efficient structures. In the production of such components, the geometric complexity and the multi-material mix pose a particular challenge. Production usually requires several process steps and time-consuming manual work steps. With SAMBA Multi, Cevotec offers a production system that automates the material lay-up of sandwich components in a single production system. SAMBA Multi systems feature parallel feeding units for different materials to be processed and placed precisely on 3D sandwich cores or lay-up molds. An optional linear axis and adaptive gripper sizes allow for the lay-up of also larger components.
Cevotec also officially joined the Fiber Placement Center (FPC) at JEC, which celebrated its first anniversary during the show. Driven by Fraunhofer IGCV and SGL Carbon, the FPC collaborates with industry partners to develop innovative automated fiber placement solutions for customers. Supported by the Fraunhofer IGCV, Cevotec will install a SAMBA Pro Prepreg system in the FPC headquarter in Meitingen/Germany by mid-2020. Thorsten Groene explains: “We are looking forward to developing our technology and creating new applications together with our partners of the FPC. Cevotec constantly pushes the application boundaries of Fiber Patch Placement to exceed industry’s requirements for accurate fiber placement on complex shapes.”
