Innovation Center
BRIC Engineered Systems
Welcome to the BRIC Innovation Center. Here we will share our latest accomplishments in Innovation and
we encourage you to send us your comments and thoughts.
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BRIC is currently developing a long reach robot built entirely out of composite materials.
Today's long reach robots are massive structures.
The goal of this development work is to maximize reach while minimizing the overall weight and size of the robot.
Such a design is ideally suited for applications that require the robot to be mounted on a moving
platform, or hanging from an overhead structure. The link design of this robot is complete and
is patented. Design around the joints is underway with plans to have a scaled prototype robot
built for testing within the next months.
A full scale prototype is currently in the design phase with completion target dates of the spring
of 2010.
Typical composite structures have hollow cross-sections. The novelty of the BRIC design is the concept of the internal support structure made out of composite materials to increase the stiffness of the structure while minimizing the weight. The internal support structure can be a variety of shapes ranging from beams to X’s to crosses. The outer cross-sectional profile can be any shape, including circular/oval, and square/rectangular. The internal support structure is made of lengths of individual pre-cured or non-pre-cured filament/ribbon wound simple cross-sections (triangles, squares, etc.). Multiple lengths of simple cross-sections are joined to form the overall cross-section embodying the internal support structure. The outer-shell of the profile is either pre-cured or non-pre-cured filament/ribbon wound around the internal support structure. In addition to the support structure, the cross section can be filled with a foam material or produced as an integral skin cellular composite to provide additional strength. The design is well suited to simple manufacturing processes of carbon-fiber components which will result in reasonable manufacturing costs. |
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