Software development gives aerospace firm competitive edge

“This process has given us an edge over European aerodynamic model manufacturers and has cemented our relationship as a preferred supplier to the major European aircraft developers,” says Mike Sullivan, managing director of Future. The company is one of Europe’s leading designers and manufacturers of models and components for aerodynamic assessment in wind tunnel environments. One area of particular expertise is in the manufacture and development of new wing shapes. Part of the process of manufacturing wings for aircraft involves drilling minute surface holes into the components so that they can be pressure tested within a wind tunnel. Micro-tubes the size of hypodermic needles are fitted to connect each of these holes to pressure sensing equipment inside the model. It is also necessary to drill 1 mm diameter holes up to 300 mm long to connect these surface features and invariably these are all running at differing vectors. Having first installed VISI software in 1997, Future now operates seven seats running on a network license throughout 10 PC workstations and it asked Vero to help it develop a dedicated application for micro-drilling of aerospace components. The technical brief was for up to 350 holes per wing (ranging from 0.3 mm - 1 mm) to be precisely positioned and to be perpendicular to the surface at that point. At that time, the only feasible approach to the problem was a series of steps to calculate the vector direction and rotations for each compound hole. Having to perform a sequence of events for typical parts with more than 100 holes meant many hours and even days worth of effort, before any of this information could be passed down to the manual 7-axis EDM machines. The bespoke solution provided by Vero was developed in two stages. The original specification provided by Future was to provide a solution for quickly identifying all the compound holes, including the diameter, depth, positional co-ordinates and the rotations required to manufacture each hole. The initial request was to output this information in a table format that could then be passed to the machine operator who would then use this information to produce each required hole. “The first result was great and surpassed all of our expectations, the complete hole identification process was now taking a matter of minutes as opposed to a matter of hours or days,” says Mike Sullivan, managing director. Future decided to investigate the possibility of automating the complete process, bringing together both the identification and manufacturing of holes into one application. It was decided that although long internal holes should still be drilled by EDM, the 0.30 mm dia surface holes could be drilled by solid conventional 5-axis drilling and this led to a purchase of a 1.5 m capacity multi-axis high speed CNC machining centre. Vero subsequently developed a complete solution that could produce drilling toolpaths automatically from the solid or surface model data provided for use on the machining centre. “We can now produce an automated programme that needs no editing on the machine tool and has therefore reduced our manufacturing timescales by 80 per cent,” concluded Mr Sullivan.