Amrok tombstones are made to fit HMCs or other CNC machines with edge locating, hardened and ground wear pads, center locating or mounting holes. Manufacturer Advanced Machine & Engineering offers the tombstones with plain faces, hole-grid patterns with precision bushings and threaded inserts, precision T-slots, or in other custom configurations to accommodate customer specifications. All tombstones and plates are stress-relieved.
The tombstones are available in steel, cast iron, aluminum and epoxy-mineral. According to the company, epoxy mineral tombstones can provide better vibration damping than aluminum or cast iron, and they are useful for high speed machining centers, for which weight and accuracy are crucial factors. The tombstones are available in various configurations, including cubes, double-angle, single-angle, octagon, hexagon and more.

The new Charger Series of CNC composite tape layup machines from Cincinnati Machine (Hebron, KY) can lay 3, 6 or 12'' (75, 150 or 300-mm) wide carbon/epoxy tape with any orientation and number of plies, to ensure consistent quality, part shape, thickness, and strength. Parts can be laid up over tool surfaces with contours, flats, and changing geometries.

The new-generation tape head is described by the company as the most productive and consistent on the market at compacting layers of carbon/ epoxy tape. Re-engineered for easier setup and operation to contribute to higher total throughput, the new contour tape head allows faster, simpler side-loading of tape rolls up to 12'' (300-mm) wide and 25.6'' (650 mm) in diam. Common hardware permits lay-up of 6'' (150 mm) and 12'' wide tape with minimal changeover time. The advanced head design also features integrated ultrasonic laminate cutting, cutter depth-setting assistance, and dockable inkjet marking for system flexibility and performance.

Designed for fast, accurate lay-up with high structural stiffness and reliability, new low-rail gantry platforms come in medium and large size ranges to match customer part sizes and floor space. Also available in high-rail gantry platforms, the new tape layers deposit tape at speeds to 2000 ipm (50.8 m/min) while achieving aerospace-grade placement accuracies on very complex contours.
Also made by Cincinnati Machine, the seven-axis Viper Fiber Placement Systems enable up to 32 prepreg tows to be independently dispensed, compacted, cut, clamped, and restarted for uniform, wrinkle-free lay-up of curved, convex, concave or compound-contour surfaces. Programmed cut/clamp/restart creates openings (windows, doors, hatches) and precision edges for near-net-shape capability. This optimizes structural integrity and reduces material waste up to 65% over hand lay-up, and minimizes the need for subsequent machining and hand finishing.

Advanced controls and software, specifically designed by the company for automated composites processing, make it straightforward to program and control multiaxis movements of the systems. Proprietary programming software translates CAD tooling and laminate data into multiaxis machine commands. The software allows offline pan programming and simulation, including collision avoidance to detect and correct for interferences that might otherwise occur between the machine and the lay-up tooling.