A LOW COST 2-AXIS PLC CONTROLLED FILAMENT WINDING MACHINE WITH SIMPLIFIED FIBER WINDING ANGLE AND TENSION CONTROL SYSTEM

Abstract

Designing a filament winding machine involves two major components. First component is the designing of the mechanism which delivers appropriate winding pattern as specified by the user (i.e. the winding angle). The second component is the realization of an effective fiber tensioning system for ensuring consistent overall consolidation. Today, there exist a variety of sophisticated methods to achieve both these parameters; however the implementation of these techniques increases the price of a winding machine, making its acquisition very difficult for small scale applications. Sophisticated winding machine includes higher number of degrees of freedom, and high end CNC controlled algorithms. However for creating axi-symetric products with constant diameter, only a 2-axis winding is sufficient. On this note a novel cost effective method for fiber winding angle control and fiber winding tension control is designed, simulated, implemented into a low cost prototype 2-axis filament winding machine, and the scope for its? further improvement has also been discussed. The system designed, uses a cost effective PLC as the centralized controller of the system for implementing both fiber winding control and tension control through PID control. A novel actuator for tension control is designed and implemented. Also a comparison between the conventional PI controller and a Mamdani type Fuzzy inference based control system for controlling the fiber tension is made. In this process a novel technique for making PI controller capable of handling known nonlinearities in the system is introduced. Experimental system responses of the designed prototype are analyzed.