A twin-cavity tool, supplied by Koller Formenbau (Dietfurt, Germany), molds a complete set of left and right B-pillars in one stroke. After this is completed, the two shaped preforms are mated to two preheated steel B pillars and then fed into the press. The preforms are then transferred from the heating drawer to a forming station where they are placed onto and shaped by a set of pins that essentially form an articulated tool. Here, the CFRP preforms and the steel B-pillars are preheated before pressing. The robot then picks up the preforms again and after returning to the workcell’s periphery swivels to the other side of the robot transit aisle and places the preforms into one of several drawers in a convection oven. “The resin application is programmed to fully impregnate to the edges during the pressing.”Ī robot picks up two of the adhesive-coated prepreg preforms and places them on a light table to enable an automated stack orientation check, which is completed in a few seconds by a Vision Machine Technic (Mannheim, Germany) system. “If the resin goes to the edges, then the needle grippers we use to pick up the preforms would get covered in resin and no longer work,” explains Wolferseder (Figs. The resin forms a pool in the center of the stacks, leaving about an inch or so around the edges. The resin is mixed and injected via a dual-head system supplied by KraussMaffei (Munich, Germany), with an integrated volume flowmeter that records the quantity applied to each stack. The non-crimp fabric (NCF) for the preforms is made at BMW’s joint venture plant SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers, 60 minutes away in Wackersdorf, which also supplies the i3 and i8 lines. A sill manufacturing cell equipped with two KUKA (Augsburg, Germany) robotic arms applies epoxy resin simultaneously to two dry textile preforms. The sills that run along the lower sides of the BIW are assembled from two CFRP parts, also wet compression molded. Walking past the CNC milling cells, Wolferseder shows how a wet-compression-molded tunnel part is placed into the front of the machine while another is being milled at the back, for maximum throughput and efficiency (Fig. “We have a good relationship with them, and we also build some tools in-house.” Many of the tools in the presses, he says, are supplied by FRIMO (Lotte, Germany). Inside, a bank of 10 automated CNC milling machines supplied by EIMA Maschinenbau, (Frickenhausen, Germany) flanks the left side with a line of presses opposite - five for wet compression molding and two for hybrid B-pillar pressing - all supplied by Dieffenbacher (Eppingen, Germany). ![]() As he leads the way into the open production area, he explains that the CFRP Shop’s 100 employees cover three shifts, five days per week. At this point, BMW Group Plant Dingolfing’s head of Press Shop and CFRP Production Peter Wolferseder takes over the tour.
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