Photo courtesy NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center/Fred Deaton


AUTOMATION IN AEROSPACE


A robotic system from Electroimpact Inc., equipped with a 21' (6.4-m) robot arm moving on a track, builds large composite components held by a rotisserie-like structure. The system was recently installed at the Composites Technology Center in NASA’s National Center for Advanced Manufacturing at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.


Expanding the Horizons of Aerospace Automation


More automation in paint and surface prep, composite airframes and engine components will be needed for aero builders to meet production goals


Patrick Waurzyniak Senior Editor


O


nce considered also-rans behind automated drill- ing and fi lling, alternative aerospace automation processes, like painting, coating, sanding and other surface preparation, are starting to catch on


with aerospace builders, especially in commercial aviation where immense order backlogs loom large and demand immediate attention. Boeing, for example, forecasts that the world fl eet of new commercial airplanes will double in size by 2032, with more than 35,000 new airplanes, worth an estimated $4.8 trillion, on the horizon to be built.


That has airplane manufacturers and suppliers urgently exam- ining automation possibilities in the many secondary and tertiary applications, beyond drilling and fi lling, in order to help reduce order backlogs. In addition to paint and prep work, increased op- portunities for automation include speeding composite tape layup operations for constructing composite airframe structures to im- proving machining cycle times with fl exible manufacturing systems (FMS) used in producing metal components for aircraft engines.


February 2016 | AdvancedManufacturing.org 59


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116