Reel-to-Reel Carbon Fibre Ablation Rig.

This was a project carried out as a contract for PaCE (Polymer and Composite Engineering) Lab at Imperial College London, in collaboration with Jack Ashley. PaCE wanted a machine that could transfer carbon fibre tow from one reel to another. The tension of the tow needed to be controllable and the machine needed to neatly re-reel regardless of how untidy the input reel was. This required a real time feedback loop based on computer vision to correct for abnormalities. The whole rig was constrained in it’s form factor as it needed to fit entirely inside an enclosure they were using to ablate the tow with a high power laser.