Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2021 - 46

APPLICATION
BRIEFS
Innovation on a Larger Scale:
Robotic Fiber Placement and
3D Printing
Siemens USA
Washington, DC
https://new.siemens.com/us/en.html

he advantages promised by Industry 4.0 are being
realized at Ingersoll Machine Tools in Rockford,
IL. " Digital twin " machine design simulation, higher
robotic intelligence, and complex motion are the
essential tools there. Those tools are making largescale mold production, part machining, and process
automation accessible to the broader aerospace,
marine, and other industry sectors.
" The disruption promised by Industry 4.0 has
already begun, " said Jason Melcher, vice president of
sales at Ingersoll. " What's all the more remarkable is
that it's happening in aerospace, where machine
design for improved mold and part production is
about the largest of the large, the most difficult of
the difficult.
" Here, process impedance is evaluated not just hourto-hour, but minute-to-minute and pounds-per-hour, "
Melcher explained. " We are seeing greater makeability,
supported into the future by the aerospace industry's
top CNC and motion technology platform. "
For many years, Ingersoll's mechanical, software,
and process engineers have teamed with Siemens
engineers to develop next-generation, large-format
machine designs. Now, these two technology companies are teaming up with customer engineering
teams to invent, validate, and mitigate risk. They are
collaborating on a larger scale, where intelligent
robotic fiber placement and massive print/mill part
production are no longer a vision but a reality.

From simulation to 3D printing - Siemens' CNC-controlled robot and Ingersoll's
ingenuity make it possible.

Robotic Fiber Placement
A longtime player in automated fiber placement
(AFP) for aerospace, the Ingersoll venture into highend robotics seems a natural progression. The company's ambition has been to make robotic fiber place- MasterPrint™ 3D printing machine in the Development Center at Ingersoll Machine Tools.
ment affordable to second- and third-tier aerospace
designs, achieving repeatable robotic positioning accuracies to
part producers. But that ascent into the aerospace market had
less than 1 mm. Accuracy is maintained for both standard and
been held back by several earthbound realities including the
inverse robotic motion.
historic inaccuracy of large-scale robotic positioning, the lack of
The robotic motion of a Robotic FP machine is easily conrobotic control at the machine operator level, and the high cost
trolled at the machine using the Siemens Sinumerik CNC
of designing and building larger-scale, customized AFP systems.
Operate interface. The control's intuitive graphical interface is
Even in recent years, the positioning accuracy of larger-scale
universal across the Sinumerik CNC platform of controls.
robotics has been no better than roughly 5 mm and with poor
Aerospace customers can achieve higher process efficiencies
repeatability. To address this limitation, Siemens evolved its
plantwide as operators quickly become familiar and efficient
Sinumerik 840D sl CNC to include Run MyRobot™ robotic
compensation software. This has enabled Ingersoll to integrate
using an interface that stays the same from machine to
robotics into its new Robotic FP™ fiber placement machine
machine, even when moving from 3-axis to 5-axis or 6-axis robot
46

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