Automated Inspection of F-135 Engine Parts
Demand for faster throughput of conforming parts at reduced cost is growing the need for fast, automated inspection of jet engine components at the point of manufacture.
Posted: January 23, 2017
Level 3 Inspection LLC, (L3I; Stuart, FL), master practitioners of Computer-Aided Inspection (CAI) technologies, professional services and automated systems for precision manufacturing, has announced that their patent-pending Smart Inspection Station™ (SiS™) has been successfully applied to dimensionally inspect production parts for the F-135 jet engine. The Pratt & Whitney F-135 is an advanced turbofan jet engine used in the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II single-engine Joint Strike Fighter that requires some of the most demanding precision manufactured parts and dimensional inspections in the world.
“Many of these jet engine components have very many, very small features and exceptionally tight tolerances where dimensional conformance is simply imperative. We’ve helped many parts producers who have experienced difficulty inspecting those components with traditional metrology,” said Bill Greene, the company’s chief executive officer. “Once the part number program is developed and tested, complexity is nearly free with our advanced CAI from the high-accuracy 3D Scanning (3DS) process. The program runs completely integrated and fully automated on the SiS to produce the comprehensive dimensional inspection reports needed to release First Article Inspection parts for production and volume production parts for assembly.”
The entire process of automated system CAI starts with capturing and merging the 3D scans while the SiS robotic parts presenter moves the part to present all of the needed part surfaces to the 3D scanner. Then the integrated process analyzes the 3D scan file with the inspection routine to extract all of the dimensions and produces the multiple inspection reports and stores them on the network. The entire process occurs in parallel processing in low double-digit minutes without human intervention, after simply placing the part in the gripper and bar-code scanning the paper router.
“This is really the ultimate dimensional inspection ‘Answer Machine’ capable of generating full dimensional inspection (including AS9102 form) and conformance reports on the shop floor with a non-technical operator,” noted Scott McAfee, the chief engineer of L3I. “That’s how we now use these systems for efficiency in our inspection services business and how our customers use these systems in their precision machine shops.”
“The inspection requirements on some of these precision cast and machined F-135 parts are quite demanding,” expressed Bill Osteen, the technical lead. “There are hundreds of critical features and some of them are just a few thousandths of an inch, with tolerances of just a couple thousandths of an inch. The automated SiS is well suited to rapidly and reliably perform these kinds of very precise inspections.”
With nearly overwhelming demand for ever-faster conforming parts throughput, and often with expectations of reduced cost, the need for fast, automated CAI of F-135 parts at the point of manufacture is only expected to grow.
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