Speaker
Description
As part of the ATLAS detector upgrade at the LHC, the existing tracking detector end-caps are being replaced by more powerful silicon sensors. Newly developed sandwich support structures with modern silicon chips on their surface will be integrated. This new generation of sensors will maintain and increase the recording quality of the ATLAS detector for the high luminosity phase of LHC.
The sandwich support structures, known as petals, were developed and prototyped at DESY in Hamburg. For the series production, the core assembly was outsourced to industry while the involved institutes are providing pre-manufactured materials and performing the quality control. Each petal consists of two so-called facings, the top and bottom layers of the sandwich. These are currently produced using a hand-lamination process and then cured in an autoclave. A robot was developed and built for the series production of the facings, which takes over and considerably simplifies the lamination process.
In this contribution, the entire concept of such a robot will be considered. This concerns the development and construction of a suitable robot including a tool head for the automated laying of prepreg, which can take 6" or 12" wide UD tape on rolls as input. The manual laying of prepreg was imitated in prototypes and converted into various machine concepts. A complex task was realized with the help of simple mechanics and controllers in a prepreg robot, which now simplified the production of 800 facings. The entire manufacturing process from semi-finished product to finished facing will also be explained.
