"We generally don't call it AFP, but the NB series of automatic carbon fiber wire laying machines. ”

Zhuang Jianye smiled humbly, his demeanor was gentle, and he didn't have the sense of déjà vu that floated into the sky with a little east wind in the past, but when he heard this in Lao Wei's ears, it was tantamount to a thunderclap.

Automatic carbon fiber placement machine, known as Automated Fiber Placement in English, is abbreviated as AFP, which is the abbreviation of automatic fiber placement machine.

Its role is mainly used for the laying and molding of carbon fiber composite materials with complex curved surfaces of aircraft, rockets, missiles and other aircraft.

It belongs to the most high-end core equipment in the field of aerospace manufacturing.

Because of this, even though carbon fiber composite materials have been born for nearly 40 years, countries have successively applied them to various aerospace products.

But there are not many countries that can really apply this new material well.

It's like mahjong everyone can play, but it's a truth that there are very few masters in each card that can win steadily, and there is a difference between high and low, strong and weak.

The same is true for the practical application of carbon fiber composites and the manufacture of molded products.

The lowest level is the use of carbon fiber composite fabrics produced by the carbon fiber composite production plant, the use of epoxy resin as a binder, according to the shape of the mold, with artificial layer by layer, compacted, and then sent to hot pressure and infusion.

The second level is the carbon fiber composite automatic winding machine, which was born in the 70s and is mainly used for the manufacture of long-range ballistic missile bodies, so as to reduce the overall structural weight of the missile and increase the payload.

The C-4 SLBM and D-5 SLBM of the United States, the M-45 of France and the M-51 of France all use the automatic winding process of carbon fiber to produce the projectile.

However, although the carbon fiber composite automatic winding machine can produce regular round parts such as the bullet body, the lining plate in the single body, the wings, tail fins, rudder and other plane parts on the aircraft cannot be manufactured, and it also needs to be manually laid with carbon fiber fabric layer by layer.

Let's not talk about how expensive the labor cost is, and don't mention the labor error rate, let's just say that the extra scraps of the carbon fiber fabric when laying will be cut off, and the scrap rate is not a small number.

Therefore, since the 80s, Europe and the United States have adopted automatic carbon fiber composite tape layer auxiliary machine tools, referred to as automatic auxiliary belt machines, abbreviated as ATL, as automatic processing equipment for aerospace flat panels, used to replace manual production.

The core of the equipment is the front-end machine tool auxiliary head, which is a professional belt laying equipment integrating material transportation, heating, pressure clinging, shearing and refeeding.

It is with such equipment that all the processes such as laying, adhesion, shearing, compression, and molding that previously required manual participation can be completed, except for hot pressure filling and reinforcement.

Not only that, but the efficiency of processing carbon fiber parts with this type of equipment is multiplied due to the automation of the automatic belt auxiliary machine.

Because generally speaking, the average productivity of manual laying is 0.5~1.2 kg/h, and the productivity of 20 kg/h can be reached by using automatic auxiliary belt machine, which is 20 times that of manual laying.

As for the accuracy, not to mention, the most skilled laying workers can only achieve an error of plus or minus 3 mm, while the automatic auxiliary belt machine can achieve plus or minus 1.3 mm.

The same is true for consumables, the average manual laying is 35% of the consumables, and the loss of the automatic auxiliary belt machine is only 5%, which is definitely very cost-effective for carbon fiber composite materials with an average price of 280 US dollars \ kg.

It is precisely because of these benefits that the automatic auxiliary belt machine quickly became the darling of European and American aviation giants as soon as it came out, and was soon applied to actual production, such as the vertical tail of Airbus's A330, the wings and rudder of the American Boeing 777, the Pompey of F-22 and F-18 fighters, and so on.

However, although the automatic auxiliary belt machine is good, it is okay to make a plane part, but the complex surface is not playable, and there are many O-shaped parts, C-shaped parts, radomes and noses on aircraft and spacecraft that need to ensure streamlined complex surfaces.

Therefore, engineers in Europe and the United States combined the automatic winding machine with the automatic auxiliary belt machine, and used the multi-axis linkage and numerical control foundation in the mechanical field to create a more advanced, but also the most adaptable automatic wire laying machine so far.

In this way, the laying and processing of carbon fiber composite materials with complex curved surface structure on aircraft and spacecraft can be solved.

In this regard, the United States Boeing is at the forefront, in the mid-eighties to develop the practical application of the automatic wire laying machine, at the end of the eighties, Boeing transferred the technology to the United States 3I company, so that it to achieve commercialization, so that the automatic fiber laying machine, the carbon fiber composite material processing equipment is the United States monopoly.

So since the nineties, aerospace giants such as Boeing, Loma, and Norge can unscrupulously increase the amount of carbon fiber composite materials used in aircraft, without considering whether they will be unable to process because of the deconstruction of the shape, because the Americans have made a breakthrough in the manufacturing process in this area, and they can do whatever they want.

What Boeing 777, Boeing 787, F-22, B-2 want to build.

In contrast, Europe is not so freewheeling, they only stay in the stage of automatic auxiliary belt machine, especially Spain and Italy, these two countries in the gantry automatic auxiliary belt machine technology and experience is even stronger than the United States, but unfortunately, they are left behind by the United States on the automatic wire laying machine, therefore, in aviation manufacturing is always half a beat by the United States.

Russia, including the Soviet Union before the disintegration, is inferior to Europe and the United States in carbon fiber composite materials, not to mention professional processing equipment, it has long been thrown off 108,000 miles, and currently only has automatic winding machines for the production of long-range missiles.

The domestic situation is similar to that of Russia, only a small number of automatic winding machines, which can realize the automatic production of long-range missile bodies, and the rest of the places that require carbon fiber composite materials, almost 100% are produced manually, not only low efficiency, not to mention the low yield rate, the overall cost is still high.

What's more, the production cycle is long.

Not to mention anything else, the United States only needs two operators and three working days to produce a pair of F-22 composite vertical tails, while the domestic production of Su-27 horizontal tails, which is several times smaller than the vertical tail, requires four eight-person teams to work in three shifts for a week.

2 operators, 3 working days VS 4 8-person crews, 3 shifts for a week

It is clear which is better and which is worse at a glance.

It is precisely because of such a huge advantage that the international aerospace industry calls the automatic wire laying machine an aerospace hegemony, because once you have such equipment, you can have an unrivaled technical advantage in the field of aerospace manufacturing.

And now only the United States has such hegemony, in other words, only the United States wins once at the mahjong table, and everyone else has no chance to win.

Lao Wei, as an expert of the Academy of Military Sciences specializing in aerospace application and production research, thought that he would have nothing to do with this kind of aerospace hegemony in his life, but when he heard Zhuang Jianye say this, Lao Wei keenly felt that it seemed that his country could also have a few small mustaches on the mahjong table, but he was a little uncertain, so he asked cautiously: "Xiaozhuang, have you really made an automatic silk laying machine?"

Zhuang Jianye nodded sincerely: "Yes, why don't you go and have a look?"