JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #111 - March 2017 - Special JEC World - o - 48

MANUFACTURlNG AFP

a
Fig. 4: Laying up dry
fibre material on a
convex spar section

concave bends or radii (Figure 5). The latest design of the humm3® head has reduced
its size and provided an increase in power,
which has further enhanced its ability to lay
up complex geometries without clashes between the substrate and heater.

b
Fig. 5: A comparison of the physical size of humm3®
technology (above) with an equivalent laser heating
source (below)

Easy to scale up
There is significant interest from the com
posites industry to increase the width of the
heated zone in AFP applications to facilitate
faster manufacture. As humm3® technology
is based on a cylindrical lamp oriented perpendicular to the tows, it is easy to scale up
to wider heat zones simply by using a longer
lamp. The basic design and functionality of
the system remains the same, with a wider
lamp and light guide permitting heat zones
of 100 mm and more. This is in contrast to
laser devices, where it becomes much more
difficult, and more expensive, to cover the
required heated zone width as it increases.
For Heraeus Noblelight, AFP is just the start
of the humm3® story. Throughout the tech-

Focus
Main features

Main features of humm3® technology for AFP heating:
High power - sufficient power to lay up thermosets, dry fibre and thermoplastics. Dry fibre lay-up
can be achieved at 1 metre per second.
Speed - rapid heat/cool with no residual lamp heat. Heating times and temperatures are equivalent to laser sources and much faster than infrared lamps.
Safety - does not give the same health and safety concerns as a laser. The operator can remain
next to the lay-up, meaning the technology is better suited to production environments.
Size & agility - much smaller than a laser-plus-optics solution, meaning complex geometries
such as concave parts can be laid up with no clashes with the substrate.
Close temperature control - Three parameters are modulated to control the heating: pulse energy, pulse duration and pulse frequency. Surface and through-thickness temperature profiles can
be tailored for specific applications.
Scalability - The heated zone can be scaled up or down easily by changing the lamp length. Wider
heat zones for AFP, ATL or other applications are readily achieved.

jec composites magazine / No111 March 2017

b
Fig. 6: Alternative applications for the technology: a)
Filament winding; b) Preform tacking

nology's development, strong relationships
have been formed with many of the AFP
system manufacturers as well as composite
material suppliers and aerospace OEMs.
Through these relationships, several other
interesting applications for the technology
have been uncovered. For example, it is ideally suited to filament winding of pipes and
pressure vessels - the high power and close
temperature control mean that thermoplastic materials can be investigated without the
need for a laser source. Another application
is in the tacking of dry preform materials
before infusion - humm3® can be used as a
"spot weld" device to tack several layers of
dry fibre NCF materials in one fast operation, or used with a compaction roller to
weld a continuous seam (Figure 6).
Heraeus Noblelight is starting collaborative
projects on both of these alternative applications in the first half of 2017.
The company's team is justly proud of their
technology and very excited about the future. From simple beginnings in the R&D
laboratory in Cambridge, a new technology has been born that is gathering interest
and breaking into the composites heating
market.
More information:
www.heraeus.com
Contact:
david.wiliams@heraeus.com

http://www.heraeus.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #111 - March 2017 - Special JEC World - o