INDUSTRY FOCUS MILITARY, AEROSPACE & DEFENCE
Suppliers to the aerospace industry must meet exacting quality standards and strict cost targets, while also ensuring adherence to delivery schedules. Darren Gilligan, an aerospace product specialist at WDS Component Parts, comments
Meeting aerospace sector demands [Source: Shutterstock – JetKat – ID: 72078526]
other items. These include drawer slides, casters, handles, locks and latches. The design requirements here include being compact and having safe rounded corners and edges; they also need to be lightweight yet strong enough for a long hard life of knocks and bumps.
ENSURING COMPONENT QUALITY With the manufactured parts often of extremely high value, component quality is a key
W
ith an annual turnover of over £30bn, the aerospace industry in the UK employs
around 120,000 people in 600-800 companies, and generates about 1% of the country’s total economic activity. It is therefore instrumental to the economy as well as the UK’s reputation as a leader in engineering. The sector, however, is very collaborative in the way it operates, with the big companies at the heart of the industry working closely with suppliers – by tapping into their design expertise, for example. Among the benefits, this means that more people are involved, so projects can advance more quickly, and expertise is nurtured. WDS supplies the aerospace industry through
a number of channels. On the aircraft manufacturing side, for instance, it tends to have a focus on material handling operations. As such, it supplies hoist rings, T-bolts, spring bolts, quick release pins, handwheels, clamps, and other standard parts for incorporation into the fixtures used on the plant and machinery on the production floor. Alongside this, however, the company also designs customised holding rigs, tombstones and other equipment for particular duties.
SUPPLYING PARTS Aircraft parts, such as spring plungers that are used to locate and lock airliner seats into position while allowing quick and easy reconfiguration between flights, are also supplied by WDS. In addition to this, the company supplies
latches for luggage lockers, hinges and bolts for doors, anti-vibration mounts, gas struts and many other parts, each one essential for safe and comfortable aircraft operations. Each of these parts is expected to provide long reliable service, often with only minimal maintenance, and needs to be supplied at a competitive price. WDS also supplies parts to the makers of
ancillary equipment like the trolleys the cabin crew use to distribute food, duty free gifts and
12 SEPTEMBER 2019 | DESIGN SOLUTIONS
concern – so manufacturers want to minimise the risk of them being dropped, scratched or
damaged. As a result of this, parts are to high strength designs or made in stainless steel or engineering polymers. Furthermore the weight of each part is a
consideration – saving a gram or two on each latch, for instance, will add up and make a small but welcome contribution to fuel economy. Due to the growing need for automation to increase productivity, there is an industry wide trend for improving workflow and materials handling, as well as ways to improve the actual manufacturing procedures. WDS is able to help with this by capitalising on its many years of experience developing solutions for aerospace and other sectors.
WDS
www.wdsltd.co.uk FLYING THE STANDARD FOR AEROSPACE MARKING
The authenticity, traceability and safety of components and manufactured parts is of fundamental importance in the aerospace industry. Most aviation authorities set out detailed specifications that require aerospace components to be indelibly and permanently marked with unique identifying codes. The US Department of Defence has its UID standards, while SAE International’s AS9132
specification is widely accepted as a benchmark for good readability of 2D dot matrix marks, for instance. It measures characteristics such as dot size, angle of distortion and dot centre offset. Achieving these standards allows every component to be traced right along the supply chain and back to the source of manufacture. From the largest fan blade in the engine to the smallest metal element of the fuel system, every component of an aircraft must be marked. A permanent 2D Data Matrix code, which is machine-readable, can contain enough information to
correctly identify a component throughout its lifecycle. Applied directly to the surface of a component, typically a robot-controlled scribe, laser or dot peen, marking system is used. For aerospace manufacturers, dot peen is generally the preferred method of permanent marking on metal components. With this, a hard stylus pin is projected forward with an electrically driven solenoid or compressed air to make a small dent in the surface. Rapidly repeating this process whilst moving the stylus head allows a pattern of dots to emerge, imparting characters or other codes to the metal surface. This is considered to be the method that induces the lowest stress into the component. However, to meet the stringent global standards set out for component marking, multiple
machine-legible marks must be made to very high tolerances across a range of surface profiles. Precise robotic control of the dot peen head is required to achieve this. Multi-axis robotic dot peen marking systems are generally used on the types of round and
cylindrical components typically found in a modern aero engine – disks, rings, blades and ‘blisks’ (bladed disks). Pryor’s Aerospace Rotative Robotic Marking Cell system works with parts up to 1.2m in diameter and larger if required, for example. Traceability software can automatically create unique identifiers such as serial numbers or 2D Data
Matrix codes. Once marked onto a component, the identification can be captured by a machine vision system or handheld reader. This enables a cumulative history of a component to be built over time. Automated tracking of individual parts allows engineers to rapidly identify any problems that emerge in production and close in on exactly when and where, for instance. A large, costly, component such as a blisk may require more than a dozen separate identifying marks to be made at various points, with position tolerances of 0.1 mm. Given the astronomical cost of such a component, dot peen marking is therefore the favoured choice for component marking within aerospace.
Pryor Marking
www.pryormarking.com
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