Filament winding is a process in which tensioned resin-impregnated continuous fibers are placed on specified paths of a rotating mandrel to cover the entire surface thus forming a composite component. Traditionally, filament winding is carried out on multi-axis numerically controlled lathe-like machines. This paper describes the evaluation of a robot based filament winding cell consisting of an industrial robot (ASEA IRB 6/2) and an in-house fabricated mandrel drive mechanism, both being coordinated by a personal computer. As in many manufacturing processes, tradeoffs exist between accuracy and speed. The accuracy vs speed relationships of the robotic winding cell were experimentally determined for discrete, fine and medium movement modes while traversing a segmented delivery eye path for a cylindrical mandrel in three configurations (in-line, offset and angled with respect to the axis of rotation). The results show that the robot winding cell is appropriate for very accurate winding of fiber strands if the mandrel axis is concentric with the mandrel drive axis and the discrete mode (i.e. low speed) of the robot is used. For high speed wet winding all three configurations can be accurately wound in the discrete and fine modes.