The manufacture of composite material components generally require use of a large number of individual parts or panels, comprised of various types, sizes, orientations and thicknesses of materials required to support the construction of various composite parts. Specifically, the aerospace industry requires a large number of panels (which may be referred to in the aerospace industry as plies, and thus may be used interchangeably) to be used as filler materials, in order to construct a single aircraft. These filler materials comprise a number of panels having a variety of shapes and sizes, but sometimes a large number of panels having similar size and shape are required. As an example, graduated sizes of nearly rectangular panels of filler material sometimes need to be prepared such that many panels can be compacted together for use in construction of an aircraft. In order to obtain each of these individual panels of filler material, each panel would have to be cut individually from a fabric sheet. In an alternative manner of development, panel parts having a similar size have been designed in a series pattern to be cut together, but the panel parts would later have to be separated using a cutting device.
When the number of panel fillers needed for construction reaches large quantities, the number of panels (or plies) required increases by as much as approximately tenfold. This increase in the number of panels required sometimes results in a laminate build-up with bevels on all four edges. The graduation of sizes produces the bevel shape, as the part would not be trimmed after compaction. Some attempts have been to compact large pieces of fabric into a laminate, corresponding to the necessary filler thickness, and then the panel fillers would be cut using a ply cutter, such as an AGFM 6 axis ply cutter. However, the appropriate tooling is not always available which makes this a less viable option.
Alternatives to cutting each panel individually includes cutting rectangles of material into individual panels of a certain size and then compacting those rectangles to build a filler. Each panel is graduated by a certain offset to be a different net size, so as the second panel would be offset again from the net size of the first panel, and so forth until the number of panels (or plies) needed for the laminate was complete. With this method of preparing panels, given the volume of pieces and the number of different types of panels needed, it presents a challenge to keep the panels organized so that the desired panels can be easily identified and selected for use in the compacting process to form a filler. Having each panel separate requires marking and tracking each panel individually. Further, given that the panels would typically be strewn across a compaction table, the panels would have to be collected from the table to form a kit for later assembly and thus the laminate may need to be created at the compaction table. This results in reduced flexibility in where and how these fillers are prepared for use in the construction process, particularly given that the pieces would have to be stacked sequentially to meet requirements for proper assembly.
Other options for preparation of these fillers have included using tab-out stringers; building ply blankets and then cutting out the panels using a cutter, such as an AGFM cutter; using a Gerber cutter; using a two-step filler (filler and postage stamp); and using a one-step filler plus shear tie shim. Use of tab-out stringers has shown not to be preferable as there is significant material waste. When a ply blanket is built, the AGFM knife must cut through several lengths of material bearing the pattern at the same time and this is not an easy task to perform with an AGFM. When a traditional Gerber cutter is used, each panel must still be cut individually and each piece must be selected individually from the compaction table once cut. Further, the Gerber cutter only cuts a 90 degree cut. Thus, use of this method results in no time savings. Using a two-step filler process results in lay-up complexity (hand lay-up, automation issues, location tolerance), assembly complexity (shear-tie foot, probability of shimming), tooling complexity, and engineering complexity. Similarly, the one-step filler plus shear tie shim process results in lay-up complexity (hand lay-up), automation issues (location tolerance), assembly complexity (shear-tie foot, probability of shimming), tooling complexity, as well as engineering complexity.
These prior methods described above require time-consuming manual preparation and organization of the panels to later be used in filler materials. When the same selection of panels are to be used over and over again, a problem results in that these panels are not being organized or stacked together initially, and thus, the user has to search for the appropriate panels each time a filler is to be prepared. As the number of small parts needed increases, the number of steps for cutting the small parts increases as well.