May 7, 2019

What suppliers are doing to ensure product quality and safety By Mark Shortt, Design-2-Part Magazine Talk to any qualified supplier of aerospace parts and they will likely tell you the same thing: Quality needs to be the top priority for manufacturing. All stakeholders—from prime contractors to tier-3 suppliers, contract manufacturers, and job shops—know it because the safety of aircraft passengers depends on it. But today, jet makers are working to solve an engineering and manufacturing riddle that goes something like this: “How do you achieve the highest quality requirements when aircraft materials, parts, and production processes are now more complex, and more challenging, than ever?” Monitoring and Controlling the Process Aero Gear (www.aerogear.com) manufactures precision gears and gearbox assemblies used by aerospace giants like Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, Boeing, and General Electric. Last June, the company completed a 24,000-square-foot addition to its facility that Aero Gear President Doug Rose said was necessary to keep pace with the industry’s robust demand for jet engines, the primary application for its parts and assemblies. The addition increased Aero Gear’s total space to approximately 100,000 square feet, which includes manufacturing space for several new programs. “We’re a small company, but we have a big impact on the industry because our gears out there flying in commercial and military aircraft, in thousands of planes a day,” Rose said in an interview at Aero Gear’s facility in Windsor, Connecticut. “We started out as just a local shop making parts for companies like Pratt & Whitney, and then, as globalization came about, we embraced it and went looking for opportunities. Now, we do 30 percent of our work internationally, exporting.” Rose said that Aero Gear ensures the highest quality of its parts by carefully controlling and monitoring its processes. A quality control person is embedded in each manufacturing cell to make sure the process is consistently producing good parts, and to document that the parts are free of defects. It’s a far cry, he said, from the old school practice of waiting until all the parts have been machined before inspecting them at the end of the process. To help make the inspection process less manually intensive, the company invested in white...

Mar 20, 2019

“Desktop Metal Introduces New, Enhanced Model to Production System Platform” Featured on D2pMagazine. com Company anticipates first shipments to start in 1st Quarter of 2019 FRANKFURT, Germany—A larger build envelope and faster printing speed are among the new advancements that Desktop Metal has made to its Production System™, a metal 3D printing system that the company calls “the fastest metal printer in the world.” Desktop Metal’s new Production System™ has a 225 percent larger build envelope (750mm x 330mm x 250mm) and a 50 percent increase in print speed to 12,000 cm3/hour, the company said in a press release. Desktop Metal (www.Desktopmetal.com) made the announcement before previewing a broad range of metal 3D printed parts at Formnext 2018, an international trade show for additive manufacturing. The first installation of the Production System is scheduled to take place during the first quarter of 2019 at a Fortune 500 company. Additional customer installations at major automotive, heavy duty, and leading metal parts manufacturers will follow throughout 2019, with broad availability in 2020, the company said.   “As we continue to expand our list of global customers and partners, companies that are turning to the game-changing technology available with the Production System, and installations set to begin rolling out in the coming months, Desktop Metal is looking to further shift the industry beyond prototyping to now include full-scale metal manufacturing, said Ric Fulop, CEO and co-founder of Desktop Metal, in a statement. Powered by Single Pass Jetting™ technology, the Production System is said to be the first and only metal 3D printing system for mass production that delivers the speed, quality, and cost-per-part needed to compete with traditional manufacturing processes. It is also reported to be more than four times faster than competing binder jet processes and 100 times faster than laser-based systems. The improved system includes two full-width print bars, advanced powder spreaders, and an anti-ballistic system that spread powder and print in a single quick pass across the build area. According to Desktop Metal, it is the most sophisticated single-pass inkjet printhead ever installed in a binder jet system. The system uses 32,768 piezo inkjet nozzles that enable a broad range of binder chemistries to print an...

Jan 28, 2019

“Spirit AeroSystems Using Robotics for Quality Inspection of Large-Scale Aerospace Structures” Featured on Design-2-Part Magazine  WICHITA, Kan.—Spirit AeroSystems engineers have combined a wide range of robotics hardware and software technologies to meet the complex needs of inspecting the company’s composite aerospace components, such as fuselages, wings, and substructures, the company reported. “Typically, inspections for meeting customer requirements have been done by large, fixed systems that are difficult to adapt to new applications,” said Spirit Vice President, Global Quality, Dan Caughran, in a press release. “Our new approach is built around two industrial robots that can interchange among seven different sensors and multiple inspection methods. In short, had this technology not been available, we would have had to rely on solutions of far less flexibility and roughly twice the cost.” “Either cooperatively or independently, the robots automatically inspect complex composite parts up to 200 feet long, dramatically reducing the time required for inspection—sometimes up to 40 percent faster,” said Mike Grosser, Spirit’s lead nondestructive inspection (NDI) engineer. “Analysis of the results is achieved through advanced phased array digital signal processing, which can be automated through machine learning.” Spirit is implementing the new robotic NDI technology at its headquarters location in Wichita, Kansas, and plans to use similar technology at its Prestwick, Scotland, facility. Spirit engineers are also investigating and applying robotics technology for other manufacturing applications where flexible automation—such as machining, sealing, and material handling—is required. Spirit AeroSystems (www.spiritaero.com), focusing on composite and aluminum manufacturing, designs and builds aerostructures for commercial and defense customers. The company’s core products include fuselages, pylons, nacelles, and wing components for the world’s premier aircraft. Headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, Spirit operates sites in the U.S.,...

Jan 7, 2019

“CNC Machine Shop Boosts Efficiency with Aid of Collaborative Robot” Featured in Design-2-Part Magazine BOSTON—Fitzpatrick Manufacturing, a CNC machine shop and custom manufacturer founded in 1952, regularly brings new technology into its factory to increase speed, improve efficiency, and remain competitive. The company recently deployed Rethink Robotics’ Sawyer™ collaborative robot at its Sterling Heights, Michigan, facility to increase operational efficiency and to counterbalance a tight labor market. “We were very deliberate about finding the right job for Sawyer,” said Kevin LaComb, co-president at Fitzpatrick Manufacturing, in a press release. “This is the first time we’ve deployed advanced automation. In job shops, it’s hard to predict what project will come in. With Sawyer’s adaptability, we can automate the repetitive, mundane jobs and free up human workers for more skilled, higher value tasks.” Fitzpatrick Manufacturing supplies parts to more than a dozen sectors, including aerospace, automotive, medical equipment, and oil and gas. The company is using Sawyer to help hone parts that become components for the motion control industry–work that requires precise tolerance and repetitive action. Sawyer identifies which part to run first—short versus long—and loads it into the honing machine. When the first part is finished, Sawyer removes it, loads a second part into the machine, and places the first part in the wash station. From there, Sawyer dries the part at the air blow station before packaging it in a box for shipment. With 400 spots on the pin board to be processed, Sawyer can package between 280 and 300 before a human worker needs to intervene. This process could take five to eight hours, which allows Sawyer to run overnight, lights out, and have all the parts ready to go when workers arrive back at the facility. Sawyer is one of two collaborative robots manufactured by Rethink Robotics—the other is Baxter®—that are designed to work safely alongside people.  The cobots are powered by the Intera software platform and can be trained and on the job in a matter of hours, according to the manufacturer. The majority of Fitzpatrick’s employees have been around for years, and introducing Sawyer was initially met with uncertainty on the floor. However, once the team saw the cobot’s versatility, and...

Dec 6, 2018

PROSPECT, Conn. — (December 5, 2018) — Design-2-Part (D2P) Shows, a series of design and contract manufacturing trade shows across the U.S., has set a new annual attendance record for its trade shows in 2018. The eleven 2018 shows combined to deliver 14,935 engineers and buyers, the highest number in the 44-year history of D2P. “We are extremely pleased with the year our shows had in 2018,” said Jerry Schmidt, President of Design-2-Part Shows. “We invest a lot of time and money in attracting attendees to each show. But this year, we also acknowledge a resurgence in America’s manufacturing industry and the U.S. economy as a whole. The feedback that we receive from our exhibitors in post-show surveys showed that they also saw a higher level of active buyers than in recent years, resulting in some of our highest Customer Satisfaction marks ever.” D2P will look to continue this run in 2019 with eleven more shows scheduled in Grapevine, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Uncasville, Connecticut; Schaumburg, Illinois; Santa Clara, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Marlborough, Massachusetts; Pasadena, California; Oaks, Pennsylvania; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Charlotte, North Carolina. Design-2-Part Shows provides U.S. manufacturers an efficient opportunity to meet local and national job shops and contract manufacturers face-to-face to source custom parts, components, services, and design. Exhibiting companies showcase their design-through-manufacturing services, featuring more than 300 product categories for the metal, plastics, rubber, and electronics industries. D2P Shows exclusively feature exhibiting job shops and contract manufacturers with manufacturing operations in the United States. Companies that do not have facilities in the U.S. are not permitted to exhibit. For information on exhibiting or attending any Design-2-Part Show,...