Fraunhofer IWES Opens BladeMaker Centre

BladeMaker, a manufacturing centre set up to advance rotor blade production, was inaugurated yesterday in Bremerhaven.

The Fraunhofer IWES, together with 15 partners, has coordinated the development of the new blade manufacturing centre. Scientists, rotor blade and component manufacturers, providers of production controls, and material suppliers have been working together on the concept and process development for three and a half years with the goal of advancing the manufacturing of rotor blades from small-series to major industrial production.

The manufacturing of rotor blades still demands a high degree of manual labor. This is due to the low piece numbers in a production series compared to the automotive industry for example. Whilst in the latter sector, models roll off the line hundreds of thousands of times, the tool mold for a rotor blade is only used as a template a few hundred times. Yet, for manufacturers, the ability to produce parts more quickly and with a constantly higher level of precision can result in significant cost advantages, according to Fraunhofer IWES.

The initial goal of the newly launched centre is to achieve savings of minimum 10 per cent through more efficient production processes, the use of innovative materials and carefully selected automation approaches.

Contrary to the general trend in composite manufacturing, linear drives with additional rotational degrees of freedom are preferred to a robot solution. A verified cost model that has been developed in close collaboration with a large number of blade manufacturers has confirmed the feasibility of this aim.

The demonstration centre is open to all interested industrial companies for production-related testing, Fraunhofer IWES said.

IWES scientists will continue to examine manufacturing and process technologies in order to identify the ideal blade design for industrialized production until fall 2017. The next milestone is the manufacture of a model blade which will pass through the various production steps. This will provide an opportunity to identify areas for improvement as well as compare and assess results.

Fraunhofer IWES explained that the results of the BladeMaker project will give quality-conscious manufacturers a competitive edge and, ultimately, also render the generation of wind energy more cost-efficient.

The project is being funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy to the tune of around EUR 8 million.