Periodic Reporting for period 2 - FIBREMACH (Minimizing exposure of humans to potential carcinogenic dust and increasing competitiveness with robots in composite parts machining.)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-06-01 al 2023-12-31
Manufacturing is one of the strongest motors of the European economy. Around 1 out of 10 of all enterprises in the EU-27's non-financial business economy belong to the manufacturing industry, employing 28.5 million people in almost 2 million enterprises and generating 1820 billion € of value. Since 2014 the European Commission is actively stimulating the introduction of new technologies leading to flexible manufacturing, clean processes and improved production to increase the competitiveness of the EU manufacturing industry. There is a clear trend in the manufacturing industry to replace metal parts by composite parts in order to reduce the weight of the components and increase the performance of products in sectors as diverse as transportation, energy generation, and construction.
European manufacturing companies need to increase their production flexibility since in an everyday basis new composite parts are being designed for products as diverse as aircrafts, automobiles and consumer goods. Currently used milling-machines are not suited for that flexibility. Current robotic solutions don’t meet the accuracy requirements of composite parts in sectors such as aerospace, wind power and automotive that are gaining momentum in the EU Green Deal for transport optimization, electrification and clean energy generation. EU composite manufacturing industry is extremely concerned with the dust generated during composite machining due to the potential cancer risk related to the breathing of fibres and resin, and severe health issues on skin, eyes, lungs and liver. In an industry survey on carbon fibre machining 81% of respondents agreed that there is “very high” or “high” need for new actions in order to extract dust from the working area.
FIBREMACH will replace milling machines and manual cutting of composites with a safe, accurate and low-cost robot. The FIBREMACH project answers to the needs of EU composite parts manufacturers and EC trends in key enabling technologies for advanced manufacturing, in order to achieve cleaner processes and increase the competitiveness of EU industry. Thus, a robotic system with an internal dust suction system (suction of more than 98%) has been created to improve health and safety conditions, minimizing the exposure of people to dust containing fibres and resins and making the use of protective equipment unnecessary, with lower energy consumption (22% less), higher performance (3 times more accurate than current robotic systems) and continuous process monitoring and control for "right first time" machining, while being 68% cheaper than milling machines. The project introduces to the market a new technology for the internal suction of dust generated during machining through hollow cutting tools and spindle, minimizing the exposure of people to fibres and resins, providing greater suction capacity and automatic tool change capability, increasing productivity. A scalable industrial robotic architecture is used to provide flexibility to EU composite part manufacturers, better adapting the machining system to their changing production needs, requiring much less investment than traditional machine tools and therefore making companies that currently mill, trim and drill composites manually or by milling machines, such as AERNNOVA, adopt a robotic solution for greater worker protection and higher productivity. The FIBREMACH approach (based on ALDAKIN's expertise in increasing robot precision) has been made possible thanks to PERON's spindle (with the innovative 98% dust extraction system) and FACET's customised tooling (specific design that directs the machined dust into the tool and spindle).
European manufacturing companies need to increase their production flexibility since in an everyday basis new composite parts are being designed for products as diverse as aircrafts, automobiles and consumer goods. Currently used milling-machines are not suited for that flexibility. Current robotic solutions don’t meet the accuracy requirements of composite parts in sectors such as aerospace, wind power and automotive that are gaining momentum in the EU Green Deal for transport optimization, electrification and clean energy generation. EU composite manufacturing industry is extremely concerned with the dust generated during composite machining due to the potential cancer risk related to the breathing of fibres and resin, and severe health issues on skin, eyes, lungs and liver. In an industry survey on carbon fibre machining 81% of respondents agreed that there is “very high” or “high” need for new actions in order to extract dust from the working area.
FIBREMACH will replace milling machines and manual cutting of composites with a safe, accurate and low-cost robot. The FIBREMACH project answers to the needs of EU composite parts manufacturers and EC trends in key enabling technologies for advanced manufacturing, in order to achieve cleaner processes and increase the competitiveness of EU industry. Thus, a robotic system with an internal dust suction system (suction of more than 98%) has been created to improve health and safety conditions, minimizing the exposure of people to dust containing fibres and resins and making the use of protective equipment unnecessary, with lower energy consumption (22% less), higher performance (3 times more accurate than current robotic systems) and continuous process monitoring and control for "right first time" machining, while being 68% cheaper than milling machines. The project introduces to the market a new technology for the internal suction of dust generated during machining through hollow cutting tools and spindle, minimizing the exposure of people to fibres and resins, providing greater suction capacity and automatic tool change capability, increasing productivity. A scalable industrial robotic architecture is used to provide flexibility to EU composite part manufacturers, better adapting the machining system to their changing production needs, requiring much less investment than traditional machine tools and therefore making companies that currently mill, trim and drill composites manually or by milling machines, such as AERNNOVA, adopt a robotic solution for greater worker protection and higher productivity. The FIBREMACH approach (based on ALDAKIN's expertise in increasing robot precision) has been made possible thanks to PERON's spindle (with the innovative 98% dust extraction system) and FACET's customised tooling (specific design that directs the machined dust into the tool and spindle).
The following results have been obtained during the development of the project:
- Machining spindle with internal suction in the precise machining point (edge of the tool), instead of the current suction-hoods targeting the whole area.
- Special design PCD cutting tools: opposed to current standard, the custom tools will force the dust to go inside of the tool.
- Removes the health concerns associated to composite machining from the source and in addition provides:
o It is not necessary for workers to wear protective equipment because the air quality is not affected when machining.
o Reduced energy consumption for suction, saving energy currently required for machining.
- Provides an accurate, cost-effective and high-productivity composite machining system thanks to the robot’s integrated accuracy increasing technology at a fraction of the cost of a traditional milling machine.
- Integrates an automatic monitoring system that assists the operator to obtain defect-free machined parts, in combination with latest ICT for total process traceability, with data accessible 24/7 in the cloud.
- Makes adaptation to new production requirements possible, being designed from the beginning to be easily migrated to a larger or smaller robot and mount the robot on a linear track or AGV to increase its working volume.
- Preparation of various types of communication materials (leaflets, brochures, videos, presentations, posters, etc.) and publication of dissemination articles (journal, conference, workshop articles) as well as giving multiple public speeches in different venues, as the JEC World 2023.
- Organization of several events with potential customers to discuss possible adaptations of the system to real life. As a result, we have already made several offers to market the product.
- FIBREMACH project won the 2023 MACHINE TOOL INNOVATION AWARD, an award created by the European Association of Manufacturing Technologies (CECIMO) that aims to reward the best innovations in the machine tool sector.
- Machining spindle with internal suction in the precise machining point (edge of the tool), instead of the current suction-hoods targeting the whole area.
- Special design PCD cutting tools: opposed to current standard, the custom tools will force the dust to go inside of the tool.
- Removes the health concerns associated to composite machining from the source and in addition provides:
o It is not necessary for workers to wear protective equipment because the air quality is not affected when machining.
o Reduced energy consumption for suction, saving energy currently required for machining.
- Provides an accurate, cost-effective and high-productivity composite machining system thanks to the robot’s integrated accuracy increasing technology at a fraction of the cost of a traditional milling machine.
- Integrates an automatic monitoring system that assists the operator to obtain defect-free machined parts, in combination with latest ICT for total process traceability, with data accessible 24/7 in the cloud.
- Makes adaptation to new production requirements possible, being designed from the beginning to be easily migrated to a larger or smaller robot and mount the robot on a linear track or AGV to increase its working volume.
- Preparation of various types of communication materials (leaflets, brochures, videos, presentations, posters, etc.) and publication of dissemination articles (journal, conference, workshop articles) as well as giving multiple public speeches in different venues, as the JEC World 2023.
- Organization of several events with potential customers to discuss possible adaptations of the system to real life. As a result, we have already made several offers to market the product.
- FIBREMACH project won the 2023 MACHINE TOOL INNOVATION AWARD, an award created by the European Association of Manufacturing Technologies (CECIMO) that aims to reward the best innovations in the machine tool sector.
FIBREMACH will have a social impact when improving the health at work conditions of workers. This answers “Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing” Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge. The activity carried out in the project has resulted in two direct positive environmental impacts as a result of the FIBREMACH project:
- The overall energy consumption of the machining process will be reduced by 36% (with a consequent reduction in CO2 emissions), due to the reduction by an expected 81% of the electrical energy consumed for extraction compared to the current inefficient extraction systems based on extractor hoods.
- Fibre chips and resin dust will be collected by the suction system at the very moment that they are produced, without contamination and therefore the fibres can be more easily recycled, aligned with “Waste: a resource to recycle, reuse and recover raw materials" of Societal Challenge “Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials”. FIBREMACH solution will foster the increase on the use of composite materials by providing a safe and affordable way to machine composites for aircrafts and automobiles, which will produce a sizeable weight reduction and therefore fuel consumption reduction.
- The developed suction system has shown that it is not necessary for workers to wear protective equipment because the air quality is not affected in any way when machining with the extraction system activated.
On the other hand, offers have already been made to market the product, so we anticipate that the marketing will be successful.
- The overall energy consumption of the machining process will be reduced by 36% (with a consequent reduction in CO2 emissions), due to the reduction by an expected 81% of the electrical energy consumed for extraction compared to the current inefficient extraction systems based on extractor hoods.
- Fibre chips and resin dust will be collected by the suction system at the very moment that they are produced, without contamination and therefore the fibres can be more easily recycled, aligned with “Waste: a resource to recycle, reuse and recover raw materials" of Societal Challenge “Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials”. FIBREMACH solution will foster the increase on the use of composite materials by providing a safe and affordable way to machine composites for aircrafts and automobiles, which will produce a sizeable weight reduction and therefore fuel consumption reduction.
- The developed suction system has shown that it is not necessary for workers to wear protective equipment because the air quality is not affected in any way when machining with the extraction system activated.
On the other hand, offers have already been made to market the product, so we anticipate that the marketing will be successful.