Earlier this month, ARM Institute Program Managers Miguel Rodriguez and Russell Wanke attended the mid-program review for the Demonstration of Rapid Thermoplastic Composites (TPC) Welding at Scale ARM Institute Technology Project. The review took place at the Collins Aerospace facility in Riverside, California and gave the team the opportunity to understand how Collins Aerospace is planning to integrate the project into their facility, as well as discuss possible challenges in integrating the new technology into their operations.
Project Background
The Demonstration of Rapid TPC Welding at Scale ARM Institute Technology Project was selected from the ARM Institute’s 24-01 Technology Project Call, which which centered on the following special topic areas: Multi-Modal Inputs for AI Robotics in Manufacturing, Rapid Re-Tasking and Robot Agility, Multi-Robot, Multi-Human Collaboration, and Virtual Commissioning of Advanced Robotic Systems.
Lightweight carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites (TPCs) are recognized as a key material capable of meeting the future aerospace market high-rate demands while also providing sustainability benefits. One challenging, but key enabler of high-rate TPC manufacturing is welding. In a prior ARM Institute funded project called Rapid Welding of Thermoplastic Composite Structures, robotic continuous ultrasonic welding was shown to increase the speed of induction. This project builds on the outputs from the prior project in order to scale it to production use. The project is led by RTX Technology Research Center with team members Carnegie Mellon University, Wason Technology LLC, and Collins Aerospace.
Next Anticipated Milestone
This project is on track for a full-scale demonstration at RTX Technology Research Center’s facility in Connecticut with production-relevant parts provided by Collins Aerospace. The team has already executed a successful weld path generated from sensor scan data and is almost complete with full integration for the robotic platform. Next, the team will be working to integrate the process with parts from Collins Aerospace and collect data to generate new weld paths controlling for critical conditions (e.g., surface temperature, weld surface quality). The team will also perform tests using equipment from a different robotic brand to demonstrate that the software and hardware deployment can remain platform-agnostic.