Blum-Novotest wins prestigious aerospace award

BAE Systems has awarded a team at its Samlesbury plant that includes BAE Systems and Blum-Novotest employees the award after the German measuring and testing technology specialist reduced cycle times by over 40% on a number of production components for the Typhoon aircraft. The Samlesbury facility embarked on a project to replace an ageing machining centre with new technology. During this replacement program, BAE Systems engineers were tasked with transferring components and the corresponding fixtures to a newer Boko INF2 machining centre. "The components we wanted to transfer are critical to the aircraft, so the project was of the utmost importance," explained Ged Coulton, a specialist facilities engineer at BAE Systems. "The complete project took us four months to complete due to its complexity and the need to maintain production using the existing method. However, the length of the project was more than justified by the complexity and accuracy demands of the project." The parts transferred to the Boko are a 360 mm long by 33 mm wide elongated tablet shape. Each component requires pocket machining that leaves a critical 1 mm wall thickness on the periphery. To prevent any potential failure, the introduced Blum TC54-10 touch probe measures 834 points around the component and transfers the data, via a Blum IC56 infra red receiver, to the Boko machine's Heidenhain control, which captures the axis positions and generates the part program automatically. Once the part is machined, the control system replicates program parameters as a mirror to the previous part. This data is then used to machine the opposite hand part, effectively making each pair of parts unique. The Blum TC54-10 touch probe is capable of measuring components at a feed rate of up to 3 m/min. The previous system could only measure the points at a rate of 300 mm/min; this ensures the Blum system significantly reduces the profiling time of the parts. With a component tolerance of +/- 5 µm, the Blum TC54-10 delivers high accuracy levels with its ability to work to a 1 µm tolerance band, ensuring all parts are well within the required levels. Mr Coulton commented: "This measurement procedure is an extremely innovative process that is also a critical production element. There is no doubt that we are one of the first companies to actually use a probe to profile parts in order to create a part program as opposed to just measure the part. The fact that Blum have worked with us to achieve this goal, while reducing our cycle times by over 40% is why they have won the award."