Our SMART solutions for your industrial equipment

Industry 4.0

Today, the composite parts manufacturing industry is constantly challenged to produce ever larger volumes at ever lower costs. It also faces four major challenges in its production processes: raw material costs, carbon footprint, reliability and labor costs.

At Techni-Modul Engineering, our expertise is to bring innovations to reach your goals. These SMART solutions have been created to optimize your production by reducing cycle time, increasing quality and repeatability and improving the work environment: this is the key to optimization.

All SMART solutions are supervised by a single MES (Manufacturing Execution System): SMART Pilot, which ensures perfect interoperability between SMART solutions.

 


1What is the SMART Control?
SMART CONTROL is an automatic control solution to check in real time the conformity of the lay-up to the theoretical plan. It consists of a camera system with its lighting and plug & play software that allows control functions such as shape identification and recognition, fiber orientation control, ply positioning, gap and/or overlap detection as well as FOD and defect detection on composite materials.
2What are the benefits?
• Ply identification without laser nor barcode

• Quality inspection of plies during lay-up (shape, positioning,…)

• Accuracy (± 0.2 mm) and reliability

• Suitable for Pick & Place robotic arm or other system (3 axis,…)

• Fully modular system (plug & play software + camera system)

•Replaces the presence of a quality controller for Class 1 parts
3Different modules are available depending on your needs:

SHAPE IDENTIFICATION :

SMART CONTROL identifies the folds in relation to their real shape, calculates their position and their precise orientation in space.

FIBER ORIENTATION CONTROL :

SMART CONTROL controls the fiber orientation of the plie before and after positioning (0.2°).

PLY POSITIONING :

SMART CONTROL detects the actual fold contours and allows a comparison between the theoretical and actual position of the fold edges.

FOD AND MATERIAL DEFECTS :

SMART CONTROL detects and locates defects on composite materials, detects the presence of foreign objects on the ply (size > 0.2cm²) and locates their positions.


1What is the SMART Gripper?
Universal vacuum gripper tool installed on a mobile system (robotic arm for example). SMART Gripper can complement our automatic control solution SMART Control to check in real time the conformity of the lay-up to the theoretical plan.
2What are the features of the SMART Gripper?

• Unique standardized module (500x300mm))

• Several modules can be combined to handle larger folds

• 60 independently controlled suction cups allow you to pick up folds of different sizes and shapes

 


1What is the SMART Injection?
SMART INJECTION is a solution for injecting resin into dry preforms (RTM process) by optimising the volume of resin used to the minimum necessary and limiting losses to a minimum. SMART Injection is a compact, innovative system with a capacity of 0 to 30cl, heating up to 120°C and pressure up to 8 bars.
2What are the benefits?

Reliability: automated cycle

Time:easy cleaning of the SMART INJECTION block and no injection machine cleaning

Ecological: no resin waste in the injection machine and in the injection pipes

Decrease consumables cost: no injection pipes


The injection machine is also available with a capacity up to 60cl, and with a pressure up to 20 bar (optional).


Example of comparison for an 800g part made in RTM (400g of resin).
Comparison Injection machine SMART Injection Conclusion
Labor 30 minutes 15 minutes - 50%
Consumables 55€ 8€ - 89%
Resin waste 200g 40g - 80%

 


1What is the SMART Pick&Place?
The most basic and oldest fabrication method for thermoset composites is hand lay-up, which typically consists of laying dry fabric layers by hand onto a tool to form a laminate stack.

Today, most composite parts are draped manually and in order to meet increasing production rates, we totally re-examined this production process by developing an automated technology capable of taking one or more plies from an initial reference and placing them in their final position (flat or 3D) according to the lay-up plan (SMART Pick & Place).

Our SMART Control solution can complement the SMART Pick & Place in order to check at 100% the confirmity of the draping.
2What are the benefits of this solution?

• Reduction of cycle time


• Improved quality and repeatability for production


• Improvement of the working environment


• Adaptable to different composite materials (dry and prepreg materials)

Customised industrial machine

Depending on your needs


Standardised industrial machine

SMART Stacking solution



Designed according to demand. Different configuration possibilities according to the requirements.

Example of configuration :

- Unwinding of the material
- Draping and shaping of folds
- Lay-up control (SMART Control)
- Compaction
- Preform trimming
- Preform assembly
- Closing of the injection mould

Solution designed for the automatic production of stacks (2 plies per minute. This solution includes the universal gripper (SMART Gripper) and the SMART Control.

Two references are available:

- Working area: 1000x600mm for plies with a maximum size of 500x300mm
- Working area: 2000x1000mm for plies with a maximum size of 1000x300mm