Automated fiber placement

These materials, which offer lighter weight with equivalent or greater strength than metals,[1] are increasingly used in airframes and other industrial products.

The tows are fed to a heater and compaction roller on the FPM head and through robotic type machine movements, are placed in courses across a tool surface.

Courses are generally placed in orientations of 0°, +45°, -45° and 90° to build up plies which in combination, have good properties in all directions.

[2] AFP machines place fiber reinforcements on moulds or mandrels in an automatic fashion and use a number of separate small width tows (typically 8 millimetres (0.31 in) or less) of thermoset or thermoplastic pre-impregnated materials to form composite layups.

This technology allows better precision and increased deposition rates when compared with experienced laminators but, while allowing for more complex layup geometries than Automated Tape Laying (ATL) it does not reach the same deposition rates.