When the first robotic leading edge profiling system we built for
compressor blades starting officially cutting parts there was a lot of
excitement from both our engineers and our customer. Of course our engineers were high-fiving and
twisting caps when they saw the fruits of their labor working and proof our adaptive
robotic finishing was really coming of age.
 |
| Adaptive Robotic Profiling System for New Make Compressor Blades |
Our customer seemed orders of magnitude more excited. They
discussed scaling up to cover their entire production within the next year....no problem. We assumed their excitement was the
usual facts: now they are automated they had saved considerable
amounts of labor, raised the consistency of their product and they were
able to relieve the stresses of scaling up. Whenever they were gearing up to meet a new
production part or working to increase capacity the skilled hands of the manual
bencher for this operation was one of the difficult things to duplicate.
It took months after the system was installed until we
started hearing the rumours of what the true game changing benefits were. It was oblivious to us because of our lack of
knowledge of the industry at the time and the driving forces behind the tight
tolerances of leading edges. The fact
that this operation was previously only feasible manually left design engineers
at the mercy of what a skilled hand could achieve. Now that there was a robotic adaptive
profiling system able to guarantee profile leading edge shape and angle meant
that each part was manufactured with the correct design tolerances. In the
engine this leads to gains in increased compressor efficiency, reduced fuel
consumption, extended on-wing times and reduced spare part costs. Now we were starting to get a true feeling of
our customer’s excitement. Wow we
thought looking at each other, we should have charged double!!
Now today as our engineers push forward evolving our
adaptive finishing platform we find on the repair side the same excitement is
present. These benefits of adaptive
robotic profiling translate very well as anyone who has familiarized themselves
with Sermatech’s RD-305 or Lufthansa/University of Aachen’s ARP will attest. The adaptive finishing goes up a notch in
this scenario as well since we fool with adapting more parameters. Each part is worn a different amount and to
meet the flow conditions of the original blading the design criteria now includes chord
length, profile thickness and leading edge angle. This keeps our engineers just as excited as
our customer, which makes for a wonderful journey!
I’d love to hear of any other benefits or challenges that
adaptive robotic finishing could bring to life!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Let me know what you think! I love a great discussion!