Online consolidation fiber placement is emerging as an automated manufacturing process for the fabrication of large composite material complex structures. While traditional composite manufacturing techniques limited the products' size, geometrical shapes and laminate patterns, robotic automation of the fiber placement process allows the manufacture of complex bodies with any desired surface pattern or towpreg's direction. Therefore, a complete understanding of the robot kinematic capabilities should be made to accurately position the structure's substrate in the workcell and to compute the feasible product dimensions and sizes. A Matlab algorithm is developed to verify the feasibility of straight-line trajectory paths and to locate all valid towpreg segments in the workspace, with no focus on optimization. The algorithm is applied preliminary to a three-link planar arm; and a 6-dof Merlin robot is subsequently considered to verify the towpreg layouts in the three-dimensional space. The workspace is represented by the longest feasible segments and plotted on parallel two-dimensional planes. The analysis is extended to locate valid square areas with predetermined dimensions. The fabrication of isotropic circular coupons is then tested with two different compaction heads. The results allow the formulation of a geometric correlation between the end-effector dimensional measures and the orientation of the end-effector with respect to the towpreg segments. / Master of Science

Five-axis CNC milling machine tools bring great facility to produce complex workpieces with increased dimensional accuracy and better surface quality in shorter machining times. However, kinematics of five-axis machine tools has a complex form which makes it difficult to operate these machine tools properly. The difficulty arises from the complexity of NC-Code generation and tool path verification. Collision of machine tool or setup components with each other is a severe problem in five-axis machining operations and usually results from inadequate postprocessors or insufficient collision checking due to absence of well-prepared simulation and verification programs. Five-axis CNC machine tool owners may get rid of this problem by purchasing commercial postprocessors, simulation and verification programs. However, these programs are expensive and small and medium enterprises (SME&rsquo / s) usually cannot afford the costs of these programs. In the related libraries of commercial programs, there is great number of CNC machine tools, which is generally unnecessary for SME&rsquo / s. An alternative to overcome this problem is to develop particular program, which is capable of postprocessing, simulating and verifying milling operations, for each certain five-axis CNC machine tool. In this study, a software named &ldquo / Manus 1.0&rdquo / , which performs postprocessing and simulation processes, has been developed for the high speed &ldquo / Mazak Variaxis 630-5X&rdquo / CNC five-axis machine tool, located in METU-BILTIR Center. Moreover, tool path verification algorithms have been developed to detect collisions. The software has been written in Borland C++ Builder5.0. The developed program has been tested in sample milling operations and satisfactory results have been achieved.