A Cevotec Samba Step fibre patch placement (FPP) system will be operational from this August at the newly opened Materials Resource Management centre located at the Augsburg Innovationspark in Germany.

It will be used by research organisations at both Augsburg University and Augsburg University of Applied Sciences for research projects focusing on the patch-based fibre lay-up of composites.

“With their flexible degree of automation, Samba Step systems are explicitly designed for prototyping and product development in R&D departments, institutes and universities,” says Thorsten Groene, CEO of Cevotec. “The systems feature individual robot configurations and are very flexible in the materials they can process. They can additionally be equipped with a variety of sensors to monitor the production process. We currently plan an extension of the Samba Step system with 12 individual sensors that feed real-time data to an AI-based analysis engine.”

“We will investigate the patch-based process using ceramic fibre composites for new applications,” said Professor Dietmar Koch, head of materials engineering at the MRM.

“AI is a relevant research topic for us,” added Professor Neven Majić, one of Cevotec’s co-founders now dedicated to developing FPP technology at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences. “FPP represents an innovative composite production technology with increased degrees of freedom. This offers a huge potential for AI development in patch-based composites manufacturing. FPP will be also used for the production of hybrid materials to achieve ultra-lightweight designs.”

https://www.uni-augsburg.de/en/

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