Measurement of high flexibility components in composite material by touch probe and force sensing resistors

Abstract

High flexibility components made by composite material are of great interest in many fields, from aeronautic and automotive industries to sport and design goods. During curing process, component deformation arise and are acceptable if the component can be brought within the indicated tolerance, once the component is assembled to final product mating components, by applying reasonable forces. In order to do so, the component needs to be inspected.This work presents a high flexible component inspection method in composite material by means of a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) with a touch probe and some force sensing resistor sensors (FSR). The proposed method aims to acquire the probing forces by FSRs and uses them in a FEM tool in order to evaluate the correction to be applied to the coordinates of points acquired by CMM on high flexibility components.