Carbon Fiber Winding System, Courtesy of Exact Automation

Exact Automation - Carbon Fiber Winding System FANUC America's Authorized System Integrator, Exact Automation designed and built a robotic system to help this customer eliminate a huge ergonomic working hazard and improve the throughput of its winding machine. The machine makes carbon fiber driveshafts that can be tuned per customer specifications. The robot moves Steel mandrels weighing as much as 250 lbs. through a winding cell. First, the robot moves the mandrels from the infeed to the winding machine. Then the winding machine winds the carbon fiber around the mandrel to make the driveshaft. The robot then moves the mandrels off the winding machine to an oven staging table. Once a spot in the oven opens up the robot loads the parts into the oven. The parts run through the oven to cure, then the robot takes the parts off the oven and places them on the outfeed table. In addition to improving ergonomics, the new automated winder system has doubled their production capability over the previous process. Exact Automation: Integrating people, machines and robots www.exact-usa.com