Arevo Labs, a specialist in composite additive manufacturing technology, has introduced a scalable Robot-based Additive Manufacturing (RAM) platform for fabricating 3D printed composite parts. The technology consists of a standard commercially-available robot, composite deposition end-effector hardware and a software suite. It can be used with ABB's smallest 6-axis robot, the IRB 120, though the scalable software can support larger ABB robot models and sizes. The additive end-effector hardware consists of a deposition head with thermal management technology for processing high-performance carbon-fiber reinforced thermoplastics. The software includes CAM software to convert CAD models to a set of additive deposition instructions for the robot and a kinematics simulator that interprets deposition instructions to validate and improve part construction.
Arevo Labs' RAM platform also interfaces with ABB's RobotStudio programming and simulation software to improve the tool path generation from CAD files.
Improved strength
The platform has multi-axis toolpaths which enable production quality parts constructed with true 3D surfaces in variable orientations. The resulting parts have strength and aesthetics superior to those made with conventional Cartesian based additive manufacturing (AM) equipment and software, Avero claims. It has automation and secondary process integration within manufacturing work cells. Depending upon the size of the robot, the part build envelope is scalable from 1000 mm3 to 8 m3. ‘We are excited to be the first to develop a robot based additive manufacturing platform optimized for composite parts,’ said Hemant Bheda, CEO and founder of Arevo Labs. ‘Unencumbered by the constraints of conventional Cartesian systems, this platform is the dawn of the additive manufacturing work cell for the aerospace and defense factory-of-the-future.’
This story is reprinted from material from Arevo Labs, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.