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In AFP manufacturing systems, manually inspection of parts consumes a large portion of total production time and is susceptible to missing defects. The aerospace industry is responding to this inefficiency by focusing on the development of automated inspection systems. The first generation of automated inspection systems is now entering production. This paper reviews the performance of the first generation system and discusses reasonable expectations. Estimates of automated inspection time will be made, and it will be shown that the automated solution enables a detailed statistical analysis of manufactured part quality and provides the data necessary for statistical process control. Data collection allows for a reduction in rework because not all errors need to be corrected. Expectations will be set for the accuracy for both ply boundary and overlap/gap measurements. The time and resource cost of development and integration will also be discussed.

In many existing AFP cells manual inspection of composite plies accounts for a large percentage of production time. Next generation AFP cells can require an even greater inspection burden. The industry is rapidly developing technologies to reduce inspection time and to replace manual inspection with automated solutions. Electroimpact is delivering a solution that integrates multiple technologies to combat inspection challenges. The approach integrates laser projectors, cameras, and laser profilometers in a comprehensive user interface that greatly reduces the burden on inspectors and decreases overall run time. This paper discusses the implementation of each technology and the user interface that ties the data together and presents it to the inspector.

The Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) machine layup run time in large scale AFP layup cells consumes approximately 30% of the entire part build time. Consequentially, further reductions to the run time of the AFP machine part programs result in small improvements to the overall cycle time. This document discusses how Electroimpact's integrated system and cell design reduces the overall cycle time by reducing the time spent on non-machine processes.