The Design

The design chosen has motion in the horizontal, vertical and axial directions, as well as the eye can move in two other directions, allowing for the arm to be covered in filament in the most efficient manner. This conclusion was accomplished with the use of morphology, where different aspects of several designs were combined. The translational options were combined with the tool heads, to find the most versatile and effective option. In the end a 3-axis translational operator was decided upon, opposed to the Half-Lotus Model Concept due to the complexity of the Lotus design. The tool end has a yaw motion as well as a rotational motion. This can be seen in the drawings found in Appendix B.

A combination of the “gut feeling” as well as the “Go/No-Go” tests were applied for the final design selection. Firstly the 3-axis operator felt like the simplest option to fulfill all requirements and specifications. Secondly, upon a Go/No-Go evaluation, all customer requirements were deemed a Go, so the designed was selected.

The final design selected is a 3-axis translational design for the position of the payout eye, and the payout eye itself will have two axis of rotation, where one is parallel to the vertical axis (the yaw rotation) and the other is parallel to the cross-feed (payout eye rotation). A sixth axis will be the rotation of the mandrel itself. Thus to make the design feasible it is necessary to obtain a six-axis CNC control device, as well as the necessary rotational and translational actuators.

This design meets all of the engineering specification targets set. With this design there would be very little human interaction, mainly interchanging the parts when one is done and another one needs to be loaded. This design also allows for the horizontal and vertical carriage target values to be met because with this design there is a bit of flexibility in the lengths of those members. The eye and eye-yaw rotation were very key in choosing this design because there is a lot of movement needed from the eye to wrap the filament around the complex geometry of ends of the robotic links. This design is also able to withhold the weight from the link and the filament wrapping, which adheres to the mandrel weight and carriage weight capacity specifications. Due to the amount of automated motion in this design the repeatability is very high which is another specification met. The slim design allows the floor usage to be minimized as well.

There were several other factors taken into account when choosing a design including human factors. One human factor considered was the amount of times during the wrapping of the arm link the link had to be moved by a human worker as opposed to the machine being able to reach those areas. Another factor dealt with the degree of automation of the machine. The more automated it was the less human interaction there would be with the machine and less chance of human injury due to the machine.