Austria: Fill Presents Revolution in Rotor Blade Production

Fill presents the speedlayer, the fully automatic system for laying structure materials in spar cap production. It enables the production of very large rotor blades for wind turbines.

Rotor blade production for wind turbines today is still characterized largely by manual labor. Fill automates the production of rotor blades. Industrial production results in a massive increase in efficiency and quality.

“With the introduction of automation into the manufacturing of rotor blades for wind turbines, production costs can be reduced significantly. At the same time, quality, productivity, and process reliability are increased considerably,” explains Wilhelm Rupertsberger, manager of the Plastics Competence Center at Fill.

The Austrian machine engineering company is presenting the fully automatically laid spar cap – manufactured using Hexcel carbon UD prepreg – to the general public for the first time at Husum WindEnergy 2012 (Fill exhibition stand, open-air area OF18).

Efficient solution

The speedlayer 800 fully automatic spar cap laying system defines new production standards in terms of lengths, accuracy, and speed in rotor blade production. In the prepreg, the resin is already present in the material. The fully automatic operation is reproducible, guarantees the highest levels of laying quality, and allows short cycle times, which it has not been possible to achieve with the manual labor or semi-automatic production that have been predominant until now.

Process validation and quality assurance accompany all operations. This enables new standards – both qualitative and economic – to be set in the production of rotor blades. “We want to address the growing wind power market in a structured manner. The speedlayer 800 is the successful first step in this direction,” says CEO Andreas Fill.

Fill speedlayer 800 – technical data

Laying speed                                 1.5 m/s

Lay-down width                            800 mm

Laying accuracy                           +/- 1.5 mm

Max. roll weight                             600 kg

Long blade lengths possible

Ecology in focus

Alongside the development of energy-saving production systems, Fill is also laying emphasis in the medium term on renewables, with a particular focus on wind and solar energy. Fill now supplies fully automatic infrared welding systems for the production of solar thermal collectors. The aim is to design the solar collector completely from plastic – this is unique in the solar sector! The focus of development in the wind power sector lies in automation of rotor blade production.

Fill manufactures laying machines for carbon and glass fiber strip material. These materials are used in high-performance load-bearing structures (spar caps) for very long rotor blades. With this production process, Fill ensures the production quality of high-performance components that are used especially in offshore systems.

Fill’s own project team is performing outstanding development work that manifests itself in innovative products. Thanks to this strategy, a new, important, and central mainstay will be created in the medium term, alongside the automotive business, for the machine and plant manufacturing company Fill.

Inspection technology & quality assurance

Together with its partner FACC, Fill Machine Engineering has developed an ultrasound inspection system for composite aircraft components. The machine is distinguished by a particularly high level of dynamics in the movement of the inspection heads. This standardizes the automatic inspection of composite aircraft components at the very highest level. The performance and precision of the ultrasonic inspection system impress across the board. This technology has also found its way in an adapted form into rotor blade production.

Smart Vision Solutions – industrial image processing is a technology of the future. Weitblick Systems, a company affiliated with Fill, is its competent partner for all the latest technologies in the areas of industrial image processing and software engineering. The image processing systems are integrated into the machines and employed for a variety of monitoring tasks.

Position detection, type recognition, testing for completeness, and quality control are performed with 100% reliability. The complex requirements of industrial image processing call for specific software, which is developed by the specialists at Weitblick Systems. The close relationship with specialist machine engineer and systems integrator Fill allows the image processing experts to respond rapidly and efficiently to individual customer requirements and develop the appropriate tailor-made solution.

[mappress]

Press release, September 21, 2012; Image: Fill