Precision at Mission Speed: Modern Manufacturing for Aerospace & Defense

Metrology led automated manufacturing is shaping the future of aerospace and defense. Increased competition, workforce challenges and rising demands for precision, productivity and traceability are driving change across the industry. The adoption of technologies such as digital twins, adaptive machining, robotics, and in process measurement are enabling manufacturers to build quality directly into their processes rather than relying solely on end of line inspection. In this edition of Tech Briefs' Expert Insight series, Dan Skulan, Head of Metrology Solutions, Renishaw, explains how smart manufacturing strategies can help organizations deliver consistent quality, protect high value parts, and meet growing regulatory and traceability requirements.

Transcript

00:00:01 Welcome to the latest edition of SAPE Media Group's Expert Insight Series presented by Renishaw. My name is Woodro Bellamy. I'm the aerospace and defense editor for SAPE. And on this edition of expert insight, we'll be discussing metrology automated manufacturing with traceability by design. Today we are joined by Dan Skoolen. He is a leader in aerospace and defense manufacturing who

00:00:26 specializes in precision metrology, additive manufacturing, advanced automation and smart manufacturing principles. He brings deep expertise in industry 4.0 digitization, adaptive machining and modern inspection strategies and he will be answering some questions about automated manufacturing during our interview which we will begin now. So Dan, as you know, aerospace and

00:00:51 defense manufacturing is evolving quickly. From your perspective, what's driving the biggest changes in how parts are made today?
>> Well, first of all, we have to be competitive and that's driving a lot of the innovation in aerospace and in defense areas in both cases. Um, so when we're being competitive, we have to come out with better and better technologies.

00:01:16 those technologies are requiring higher amounts of precision uh higher amounts of automation in order to make sure that we can repeatably make these products and that's on the backdrop of having a huge number of people retiring out of the industry. So, uh I it's not uncommon for me to go into shops and have 20 30 40% of the staff either retiring or planning on retiring within 5 years. So

00:01:40 if you couple those two together, a need to be competitive to come out with new technologies, a need for these technologies to be highly precision and automating so you can get the production out the door. You couple that with the fact that you don't have people uh with a long experience of skill. You're bringing in a lot of new people. That's a lot of challenge uh that the industry

00:02:00 faces right now.
>> So Dan, many manufacturers are trying to increase productivity without sacrificing quality. How do you think companies should approach that balance?
>> Well, there's several things. What's being done in the industry now is using things such as digital twin. And digital twin allows you to investigate different methodologies prior to physically doing

00:02:26 the machining and process. So, it's a really interesting way for people to develop new ways to produce parts and verify a process before actually going through the cost of tooling up machines. However, the digital twin philosophy does require that you have tangible reference. So, a model can be a perfect machine. It can be a perfect part. You can tweak a model if you want, but at

00:02:52 the end of the day, you're not selling models. You're not te selling digital information about a part. You're actually selling creating building a mechanical system out of that part. So when you're doing this, it's really important that you have metrology in the process. So using digital twins is a great start. Then in structuring your process, you need to understand, you

00:03:14 need to have a stable manufacturing environment. Understanding and measuring, compensating, and certifying the positioning capability of the machinery that you're using to produce parts provides that stability, that reference that you can go back to when you're using digital twin. and ultimately even use an artificial intelligence. Both of those tools

00:03:36 require that you have tangible evidence and stability in your manufacturing process that you can use when you're testing out these different methodologies that allows you to build quality into a process while you're doing your machining and and whatever type of metal forming that you're doing.
>> And speaking of machines, we hear a lot about automation becoming more

00:03:59 accessible. What does it take for automation including robotics to be tr truly useful in precision environments?
>> Well, first of all, if you think about it, CNC machining is automation. Back in in the day, you know, early on there's a lot of manual operations. Now, CNC machines are under numerical computerized numerical control and that is automation. But the use of robots

00:04:22 which is even higher level of automation moving parts through factories and even using robots now for some basic machining the use of robots is increased exponentially over the last decade. In fact uh the amount of robots that are supplied in the last year was about 600,000 globally versus 200,000 CNC machines. So almost 3 to one. But when using robots very similar process you

00:04:47 need to make sure you have stability. So when incorporating robots incorporating into a process, you need to make sure that that equipment is zeroed out, that it's certified, and it can move correctly. So you can use offline programming tools to program the robot to be able to move to move your parts or even machine your parts in space. But when you produce that program and you

00:05:10 place it in the robot controller and the robot is told to move, it's really important that you know the accuracy of that robot is there, that the robot repeats and that it moves with a great uh with precision and a great deal of confidence. That's the way you can incorporate automation. The other thing is automation was traditionally used for high volume parts. Now, especially in

00:05:32 aerospace and defense, you're not doing a lot of high volume. It's a lot of changeover, short runs. So having a robot with its own sensing capability so that it can determine where the part is in space, the orientation of the part, it can determine where it's moving the part to in advance. So using probing technology, for example, on a robot allows that to robot to run lights out

00:05:57 and allows that robot to pick up and find where it is in space, where a part is in space and move it accordingly. So these are techniques that can be used and are being used right now uh to automate manufacturing
>> and parts in aerospace and defense can be extremely complex or made from difficult materials. How are manufacturings adapting machining

00:06:20 strategies to deal with that complexity?
>> Okay, so you're absolutely right. Um the parts that are being made now, especially 3D printed parts have a high degree of complexity. uh interesting high temperature high strength alloys are used and they're very very expensive. So first of all that the value proposition and what's going on in the industry is that we really can't

00:06:42 afford to be scrapping these parts or even reworking these parts. In many cases they have very thin walls uh that uh pressure from tooling can distort the part. So what's being used more and more is adaptive type manufacturing where each part is uniquely measured during the process and the tool path is updated using that data. So now we can have unique parts coming out of a process but

00:07:10 made in high volume production or multiple part production and make sure that each part is correct. So we introduce the part to the machine, we measure using scanning technology. uh we collect that data, we compare it to the original intended file and then we update our tool path so that we follow the contour of the exact part and create features on that part. So every part can

00:07:36 actually be unique but dialed in and manufactured to be highly precision using on machine scanning technology. And final question for you Dan. Traditionally many shops part in sorry traditionally many shops inspect parts at the end of the manufacturing process. Is that still effective today?
>> It's a really interesting question and and you know Renaw as a company

00:08:02 manufactures a high percentage of the CMM probes that are used in the world. and they make their own CMM now. But um we call that tailgate inspection. So when you're inspecting a part at the end of the line, it's very valuable information and you can get comprehensive information about the part, but it's actually a terrible way to control a process. It should be used

00:08:25 to validate that a process is good. It should be used to examine different tooling methodologies, different cutting methodologies, different materials, different machines. However, when you're trying to run a process, you want to build quality into the system. This provides not only an a check and making sure that every stage in the manufacturing process is checked so that

00:08:50 you can pull a part out. If a part is scrap and op, there's no reason to go all the way through to OP 120. So, you you measure it at OP 10. And ideally, what you do is you measure it before the part is cut. Then you cut to tolerance, validate it again before it moves on to the next stage. This does a couple things. It preserves the value of these parts. Again, a lot of these parts are

00:09:13 extremely high value before they're even starting to do any machining on it. But it also captures valuable traceability data. And that traceability information is becoming more and more required. Department of Defense, Department of Energy, civilian aircraft. We want to have traceability not only of the final part measurements but what was done to that part from the initial material

00:09:35 through all the stages of manufacturing to the end. So building quality into the process is the way for people to be competitively making parts uh producing parts in volume and it also provides the ability to trace along with uh producing quality parts. Well, thanks for answering those questions about automated manufacturing, Dan, and I'm sure you gave our audience

00:09:59 a lot to think about there. That brings us to the end of this edition of our expert insight series presented by Reneshaw. For more information about Reneshaw, go to www.reneshaw.com. And thanks for watching this edition of Expert Insight.