Inside the matrix

Dr Neil Calder discovers how Siemens is helping to shape the future landscape of digital manufacturing by seamlessly linking each step of a component’s entire manufacturing and operational life.
Increasing mechanisation in the drive towards full automation of manufacturing processes within the composites sector is having a wider impact on the way in which the parts of the value chain interact with each other, both in the non-recurring effort of product and production process engineering and in recurring production actions.

The acquisition by Siemens of Vistagy, with its Fibersim software for creating composite layup schemes from unstructured information including material specifications, standards, attributes and requirements, in December of last year and its subsequent incorporation into the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software part of the company, was a credible business move in an expanding market for composites products. But there is a deeper aspect to this which is indicative of the wider expansion of digital manufacturing capability in composites. By looking at the whole composites manufacturing value stream, a picture emerges of a company which is seeking to own the digital manufacturing space.

The simulation of composites layup strategies is embedded within the wider context of the digital manufacturing thread. It is not now just about the capability of composites process simulation, but where it is sitting within the continuum of manufacturing data within this digital environment. The notion of large scale collaboration, not only between equipment entities, but also between organisational entities provides exciting opportunities.

There are numerous discrete building blocks supporting this view which have crept into the composites manufacturing repertoire: laser projection of CAD-generated ply positioning geometries; tape laying to a numerical programme; and 3D weaving and braiding of complex preformed structures under NC machine tool control, but it is the way in which these are brought together that is changing and developing rapidly. The processes of automated tape laying (ATL, for wide tapes up to 300mm) and advanced fibre placement (AFP, for narrow tapes typically 25mm or less) are displacing manual layup in sectors such as aerospace and wind power, and these processes have inherent compatibility with larger scale automation and this digital manufacturing stream.

A brave new world

As a global electrical and electronics powerhouse, Siemens lives in the physical world with its core manufacturing capabilities in areas like automation and drives, machine controllers and PLCs, but there has been a recent acquisition trail of more virtual capabilities which belies the way in which advanced manufacturing is becoming more digitally defined and more seamless.

What Siemens saw in Unigraphics prior to its purchase of the company in 2007 was the capability to join it all up within a CAD environment. This acquisition started to link up the virtual world of planning products, releasing them to manufacture, simulating and validating the manufacturing environment and also providing the industrial hardware for automation.

Siemens is now probably the only company globally which can really link the virtual world with the physical world in a seamless environment. You design the part using Siemens PLM CAD software, you then analyse that part to ensure structurally it can take the various stresses and strains, you then transport that part definition to the machine tool part programme and the machine tool controlled by a Siemens controller. Siemens is capable of taking the thought from the designer’s head through every step to it being physically manufactured.

This standardisation and re-use of the same part definition data is referred to within Siemens as the existence of a single truth within stages of manufacturing and levels of manufacturing control and is the goal of product lifecycle management. The use of a common language reduces design errors and provides a framework for digital information exchange.

The product range of industry software solutions from Siemens and others since a vision of this scale has to be based on the ability to integrate manufacturing software products from multiple vendors - serves to build up the picture of this capability jigsaw. Many traditional manufacturing software solutions are now being adapted for use in automated composites manufacturing.

The Vistagy Fibersim composites layup simulation software has been a workhorse of the sector with a 20 year history which has tracked the growth and development of the composites sector from a cottage industry practiced by groups of enthusiasts, often at the edge of ‘acceptable’ manufacturing. Fibersim has evolved from being a tool configured to assist in the design of manual layup procedures to accommodate AFP and ATL. The perennial need of composites engineers to know where the fibres they have so carefully designed will actually end up is at the core of many of the digital manufacturing threads.

The CGTech Vericut machine tool path generation software has the capability to perform offline programming for ATL and AFP, meaning that these machines are now being treated like any other numerically controlled piece of production equipment. When it comes to machine controllers, Siemens’ more traditional products of Sinumerik CNC control capability is finding use within automated layup machines.

As computing power has increased, and data streams grown in scale, the ability to handle the many interactions necessary to interlink these manufacturing functions is enabled. Factory automation, manufacturing execution systems, product data management – any changes in design ripple through to production in the real manifestation of PLM. As CISCO is now offering ruggedised routing of data to manufacturing equipment, it is clear that commercial IT network providers are recognising that there is a real demand for connectivity within the manufacturing environment.

The current state of layup machinery and software for automated composites has some parallels with the way in which numerical control for metalcutting machines tools evolved during the 60s and 70s as high capital and capability investment is needed to make the technology work. And software is generally provided by machine manufactures, with different software required for each machine brand, resulting in engineering challenges to software advances.

Joined up thinking

The European Commission is recognising this technical thrust through the joint Factory of the Future and ICT calls for collaborative industrial research into shaping the future landscape in digital manufacturing. These have been annual since the economic recovery plan was put into place following the economic downturn in 2008, and the most recent €70 million call specifically aimed at including SMEs within the evolution of this capability closes on the 4th December.

The days of standalone islands of niche products of digital design, production management and manufacturing control capability are gone. The linkages between CAD and CAM, manufacturing process modelling and simulation, machine tool and automation control with design data and in-process metrology and inspection, manufacturing planning, execution and management and product lifecycle management have all evolved to the point where there is a seamless cloud of data which follows parts through their entire manufacturing and operational life. The links in this value chain do not sit in isolation.

In the same way that we quite readily accept that the air we breathe is filled with the internet, to enable all of our iDevices to operate, so then the iManufacturing of composites fills the shopfloor.

www.plm.automation.siemens.com