Patent attributes
A method of making a composite pipe has the steps of (a) providing one or more sources of composite tape, the composite tape being formed of reinforcing fibres embedded in a thermoplastic matrix; (b) helically winding the composite tape(s) around a cylinder under the application of heat to form a pipe comprising fused, concentric layers of adjacently positioned, helically-wound composite tape; (c) scanning a region where edges of wound composite tape are expected to be, to generate scanning information; (d) controlling the gap between further adjacent windings by (1) using the scanning information to determine wound composite tape edge position(s), and (2) using the determined wound composite tape edge position(s) to adjust the winding process during winding; (e) repeating steps (c) and (d). The invention also relates to a corresponding apparatus for making a composite pipe.
