ABSTRACT
Filament winding technology is one of the fundamental fabrication methods in composite material fields, which has a high degree of automation. It is the process in which continuous strands or filament of fibres is wound on the mandrel, which is suitable for high-pressure vessels, pipes, shaft and ducts. The present filament winding machines have existed in enterprises or factories, which are high costs, heavy, complex control system and machine structure. The objective of this study is to design a 3-axis filament winding machine, which has portable, lightweight, low costs, high efficient and inexpensive control system features compared to the previous and present machine. The control system relates hardware section and software section, which can meet three axes movement principle. The 3-axis prototype filament winding machine has also been developed. Arduino Uno and CNC v1 shield module are applied as hardware section. Universal G-Code Sender (UGS) and Grbl codes are adopted as software section. In conclusion, a 3-axis portable, lightweight and low-cost filament winding machine have been successfully developed, which can fabricate filament wound carbon/epoxy tubes with a proper inexpensive control system.
INTRODUCTION
Filament winding process is an expanding composite manufacturing process based on the introduction of advanced lightweight mass production items, which has increased the performance requirements of this manufacturing process [1]. Fibre reinforced composite materials have widely used in various industries, from relatively simple civil applications [2]. To meet the technology requirements, many composite material companies have improved the performance of cost-effective, high-grade quality, recyclable products. In short, the composite material has excellent corrosion resistance, good resistance to temperature extremes compared to traditional material [3, 4].
CONCLUSION
The portable, low-cost, lightweight and automated filament winding machine has been effectively developed with 3 axes. Arduino Uno is used in this efficient and inexpensive control system, which controls the x, y and z movements. This filament winding machine can perform hoop and helical winding patterns, which should be written and uploaded proper winding codes. Filament wound composite products can be fabricated from this newly designed machine. The 3-axis filament winding machine has reached the main expected results, which solves the previous problems of filament winding machine costs and complicated operation. The inexpensive control system is another popular characteristic of this machine, which can mostly meet the filament winding process requirements.
