A 5-axes filament winder with software control

Abstract

This paper presents a filament winding system including a numerical control unit, a five-axes filament winding machine with heating device for thermoplastic prepregs, a micro-computer with controlling software PC-FIL 2.1. That software was firstly developed as PC-FIL 2.0 to control a 8-axes filament winder including the rotation of the mandrel, two translations and one rotation of the feed-eye and at last, two translations and two rotations of the heating head. The motions of both the feed-eye and the heating head were completely dissociated. /1/. This paper shows the simplifications realised to reduce from eight to five the number of axes to control. The controlling software PC-FIL 2.1 generates data for programming the control unit and also provides the user with simulation facilities, to visualize the process. The present version of PC-FIL 2.1 is available for revolution vessels of general shape.