Subprojects

T1 Build

Construction Kit and Building Blocks for the Fast Improvement of Immature Processes

T1 builds the physical process from modular blocks, so it can be changed and instrumented quickly, and develops a digital twin of it.

Illustration. The instrumented gripper frame measures force, position and angle. The coupling to a digital twin of the process, shown in green, is being implemented.

Work packages

Results of the first funding phase, by work package.

  1. T1.1 Construction kit and digital twins

    The modular gripper frame was extended to record force, position and angle over time. A generalised product–process–resource information model represents product features as nodes of a Bayesian network and propagates quality uncertainty along the process chain. A physics-based virtual model of the demonstrator was built, and its bidirectional coupling to the real system is being implemented.

    Diagram of a Bayesian network whose nodes are product features, updated with clamping positions and tolerance chains.
    Schematic representation of the generalised product–process–resource information model. Figure: After Bott et al. 2024.

    Publications

  2. T1.2 Process configuration and updating

    A planner explores the configuration space of the demonstrator, coupled with a physics-based simulation of its digital twin, and weighs quality, reconfiguration effort and maturity measures. A complementary, quality-oriented approach combines the product–process–resource model with a knowledge graph to assess structural modifications.

    Publications

  3. T1.3 Provision of flexible actuators through robot-based forming

    A heated robotic end-effector for single-point incremental forming was built and tested, but this forming step proved infeasible after stamp forming. Instead, post-forming with the actuators of the gripper frame was investigated, and higher gripping forces reduced spring-in, depending on the fibre orientation.

  4. T1.4 Realisation of the reconfigurable and adjustable stamp forming process

    Besides the demonstrator, the process was set up on industrial-scale equipment with a hydraulic press, where gripper frame, infrared heating, sensor unit and press record time-synchronised data. Forming experiments showed a significant influence of the tensile gripper positions on the formed part, and the tape was characterised for friction, bending and shear to parameterise the T2 simulations.

    Publications

About the subproject

The blocks of the kit are described in a machine-readable way, and a virtual demonstrator of the process is built from these descriptions. Its coupling to the real system is being implemented.

Single-point incremental forming turned out not to work as a second stage after stamp forming. Instead, post-forming with the actuators of the gripper frame was investigated: higher gripping forces reduced spring-in, depending on the fibre orientation.

Principal investigators
Researchers
  • Alexander Bott
  • Hannah Decker
  • Malte Mehner
  • Georg Zeeb
Host institute
wbk Institute of Production Science, KIT
People in T1

Publications 6