Exceeding the expectations

In a Q&A session, Composites in Manufacturing hears from Aristo’s key account manager, Oliver Webendörfer to understand more about the trends and demands taking place in the busy world of digital flatbed cutting systems.

Increasing demand for composite kit cutting services that are cut, bagged, tagged and delivered direct to the customer means the flatbed cutting machine has gained a new lease of popularity. Although its origins lie in the signmaking, packaging, textile and leather industries, it is within the composites manufacturing industry where the battle for flatbed cutting supremacy has intensified.

Aristo, the Hamburg-based manufacturer of digital flatbed cutters offers a complete range of digital cutting solutions to a range of manufacturers who need to cut a wide range of materials. The company has a rich history of precision engineering that goes back all the way to 1862 and today it is one of the industry’s leaders in large format, computer-controlled flatbed cutters.

Q) What industries do your customers typically hail from?

Our customers are active in many different industries such as packaging, signmaking, graphic, gaskets, textile, shoes, leather and lots of technical applications, such as solar and wind energy, carbon and glass fibres. As well as composites, we find a lot in the automotive, healthcare (high-end prosthetics) and aircraft industries.

Q) And what materials types are predominantly cut on your flatbed machines?

This is similar to a variety of industries. Our machines do cut almost everything which can be cut with a knife, a laser or a router. However, we face a constant increase in composite materials like honeycomb, glass and carbon fibre textiles and prepregs.

Q) What types of demands do your customers specify in terms of purchasing a flatbed cutting system?

As a flatbed cutter represents a high value investment, the customer appreciates that they can actually see a real ‘face’ behind a product. More importantly, Aristo takes its time to precisely analyse, understand and sometimes optimise the existing workflow of the customer application to configure a perfectly matching, tailor-made cutting solution. There are always improvements which in the end, result in a faster return on investment for the customer.

Our experienced sales, R&D and application team offers our customers services before, during and after the entire order process. They appreciate that they can always contact us to get assistance and support in case they are faced with new, unforeseen cutting challenges. To reduce down-time, we have established a so-called ‘loaner head’ system. If a customer tool-head needs maintenance or repair, we provide them with a spare head which is returned after the customer’s tool-head has been repaired or has undergone routine maintenance. This relationship, our flexibility and our after-sales support are absolutely vital for our customers.

Q) Tell me something about your flatbed cutting machines?

Beside carbon and glass fibre textiles and prepregs, our machines can also cut various honeycomb and foam materials with a maximum thickness of 35mm.

We offer various types of software for our cutter such as Flexi (SAI), OptiScout, CNC Cut and Aristo Designer.

There are different versions available from the beginner up to the expert level. These software types allow the import of various external file types as well as simple to high end drawing of complex parts. Depending on the machine and tool head type, up to four heads on one machine are possible, but the requirement within the composite cutting industry for such is seldom.

In terms of lights-out/24-7 remote running capabilities, our machine software can be controlled by ethernet. There are also material transport systems available which offer lights-out production. The use of 24-7 production must be carefully analysed and depends on many parameters. Finally, we offer pen marking and ink printing solutions. Also, sticker solutions are available too.

Q) Do these machines come with automated roll-feeding of dry fabric/prepreg material equipment to the machine’s bed?

Yes of course. Our customers can select between various different feeder systems. Also, upwinding is possible. We recently developed successfully our new scrap skeleton upwinder.

Q) Do you have a favourite customer success story that you can bring to mind?

One of the world’s leading manufacturers of textile machines selected Aristo for a new project for lights-out/24-7 prepreg cutting production line. The target was to cut prepreg stripes from 5mm to 300mm in width and up to 8m in length. Some of these stripes included RFID chips that had to be positioned, and from other stripes a squared cut-out piece had to be picked up and then to be dropped into a dustbin which is integrated in the machine tabletop. The delivery of the prepreg sheets onto the cutting table and the selected pick up of the ready-cut parts had to be done using a fully-automated portal robot. To keep waste low, residual material sheets in various width and length were also processed.

All this had to be controlled in connection with an ERP system which automatically selected the right primary sheets and processed these sheets to the matching sizes of prepreg stripes. Together with Aristo’s specialised technology partners in Germany, Aristo developed a state-of-the-art solution. Aristo finds that such tailor-made developments projects can often turn into serial products, which opens new windows for its existing and future customers and their projects.

Q) In your opinion, what differentiates your machines from the competition?

Semi-industrial, long-life, quality, made in Germany, tailor-made, pragmatic upgradable solutions for customers who exactly want to get what they need for their process. Easy-to-use, simple software and machine operating which results into almost zero operating errors.

Q) Any other business?

We recently developed in a joint venture with the Technical University in Dresden which involves a new process for a selective powder binder application during the cutting procedure to optimise the preform production process.

Carbon fibre-reinforced plastics are predicted to attain a yearly market growth of 13% by 2022. This will require considerable cost savings in production. For this goal to be achieved, both automatable and material-efficient manufacturing strategies are required.

This interdisciplinary research project is aimed at developing a modular CNC cutting and fixing technology for optimised application of powder binder systems to achieve a higher automation level in the preform production process.

This plant technology implements edge fixation to ensure the dimensional accuracy of the preform blanks and a selective structure fixation for the improved formability of complex preform geometries. The definition of suitable areas is based on the simulation results of the forming behaviour for a 3D demonstrator component.

By the digital and mechanical coupling of the powder binder application unit to the cutting technology, the additional fixing step in the preform production chain is eliminated, which makes it possible to achieve considerable time savings and thus increase economic efficiency.

Besides the conceptual design, the project has laid the foundations for plant technology development for powder supply, selective powder application and thermal powder binder activation on the textile reinforced material, as well as demonstrating the potential and practicability of this technology.

www.aristo.de