Automating the hand layup process: On the removal of protective films with collaborative robots

This paper explores the issue of protective film removal in the hand layup process for composite parts production. The hand layup process, involving the assembly of prepreg plies onto a mold, is a skill-intensive task performed by multiple expert workers. A significant limitation of this method is its low repeatability, which impacts both the consistency and quality of the final product. The current research trend has the objective of developing autonomous or semi-autonomous layup cells to enhance process consistency, reduce production costs, and improve product quality. Despite all this interest in bringing automation in composite manufacturing, an area left relatively unexplored is the removal of protective films from prepregs. The plies used in the hand layup process, are generally covered by those films that are removed by the workers during the manual layup activity. The manual removal of protective films from prepregs is a tedious and valueless task, which represents a bottleneck in achieving full or semi-automation of the layup process. For this reason, an autonomous or semi-autonomous cell needs to perform it to be market-relevant. In this work, we propose a new effective method for initiating the peeling and integrate this method into a complete framework for the removal of protective films. This solution is designed to be easily integrated into a variety of existing cells. Finally, we validate our framework with an experimental proof of concept (PoC) which makes use of two collaborative robots for task execution. •Peeling equation analysis to identify key parameters for optimizing film removal.•A new solution for effective peeling initiation of protective film from prepreg sheets.•A thorough, easy-to-integrate framework for protective film removal in manufacturing.•Experimental Proof of Concept of the proposed framework, using collaborative robots.