A 5+2-axis CNC machine, travelling on a 60m track, automatically drills and fettles leading and trailing edge assemblies for miltary transport aircraft wings in a single cost-saving set-upA new special purpose machine for manufacturing major parts of the A400M military transport aircraft has been successfully installed by its maker HYTRI for its customer, Airbus. Commissioning has been completed and the machine is now in full-scale operation at the Airbus wing manufacturing plant in Filton, Bristol, United Kingdom.

Supplied as part of a comprehensive turnkey contract through HYTRI the sophisticated 5+2-axis CNC machine automatically drills and fettles leading and trailing edge assemblies for the wings of the new A400M.

The A400M is due to make its first flight in 2008.

The contract to supply the complete system including the machine was awarded by the customer in 2005.

HYTRI is a joint venture between production engineering specialists AMTRI and the world's largest, privately owned aerospace tooling design and manufacturing enterprise, Hyde Group.

Working closely with the tooling supplier Hyde Group, AMTRI designed, developed, and manufactured the sophisticated special purpose machine.

The machine employs a number of clever design innovations to minimise set-up times, and position features with high precision on very large workpieces.

Notable features include a unique post-out beam arrangement that has been incorporated to enable two-sided operation of the machine.

The whole machine is mounted on a bogie that travels along a 60m rail track, enabling an entire wing-set of spar assemblies to be machined in a single cost-saving set-up.

Further, in each and every working zone, special transformation algorithms devised by AMTRI are used to reference automatically the coordinate frame of the machine to that of the components.

This feature combined with the implementation of comprehensive error compensation ensures high precision is maintained over the full working volume of the machine.

Graham Wood, head of A400M Manufacturing Engineering for the A400M Outer Wing at Airbus, said: 'The integrated jig and machine facility represents a critical production system for the A400M Wing Assembly'.

'The machine is performing well in production with hole drilling performance and quality very good across a number of varied and demanding applications.

The fettling process is also performing to the required specification.' Philip Sholl, managing director of AMTRI, said: 'Many of the features in the HYTRI machine have been made possible as a direct result of the technologies developed in the DARWIN and AWBA research projects, where AMTRI was a key participant in both projects'.

* About DARWIN - DARWIN (Drilling Automation Research for WINg manufacture) was a GBP 1 million collaborative project, part-sponsored by the DTI, involving AMTRI, The Hyde Group and Airbus UK.

In DARWIN, AMTRI helped lead the design of a new generation of automated wing assembly systems for Airbus UK.

* About AWBA - the two-phase AWBA (Automated Wing Box Assembly) project, led by Airbus, was part-funded by the UK government's Department of Trade and Industry and comprised consortiums, including the Hyde Group in Phase 1, and AMTRI as a key partner in Phase 2, researching and developing advanced technologies for automatic wing box assembly for large aircraft.

** About the HYTRI CNC drilling and fettling machine, features are, as follows.

* Five CNC axes - three linear and two rotary.

* Special spindle - capable of low speed titanium drilling and high speed aluminium/composite machining, with a speed range of 100-10,000 rev/min.

* Automatic tool changer - incorporating a tool run-out measurement station and storage for 45 tools.

* Two machines in one - a novel 'post-out' beam feature enables two-sided operation of the machine to maximise productivity and minimise machine idle-time.

Trailing-edge spars may be loaded and unloaded from one set of jigs while machining operations are performed on leading-edge spars on another set of jigs.

* Complete aircraft wing-set of spar assemblies can be machined in a single set-up - the entire machine is bogie-mounted on a 60m long rail system to allow rapid re-deployment to the next working zone.

On arrival at each new working zone, the wheels are raised and the bogie is hydraulically clamped in position.

* High precision maintained throughout the whole working volume of the machine - this is achieved by probing known reference points on the jigs on arrival at each new zone so that the machine coordinates can be transformed to those of the local workpiece coordinates.

The feature reduces the problem of maintaining 'global' accuracy to one of 'local' proportions, and avoids the need to maintain high accuracy along the full 60m length of travel of the machine.

Coordinate frame manipulation and the integration of feature-based navigation were techniques developed and perfected during the DARWIN research project, and use the full capability of the Siemens 840D controller.

In addition, comprehensive real-time software compensation both for positioning (linear) and geometric (straightness and angular) errors is implemented in the machine control system.

The error matrix required to implement this system was generated by on-site measurement of the machine's motion using a high precision Leica laser tracking system.

* DNC operation for minimal operator intervention - on arrival at each new working zone the machine control is loaded with the appropriate program via the DNC link for the machining operations.

Recovery from errors always commences with movement along a known safe path to a safe home position.

These, and other collision avoidance features, minimise both operator intervention and the chances of damage to components through incorrect operation of the machine.

** About AMTRI - based in Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK, AMTRI supplies technical consultancy services to the manufacturing sector in the UK and clients around the world.

Its aim is to help clients improve productivity and efficiency and therefore save time and costs by providing technical solutions to production engineering problems across all sectors, mostly in aerospace, automotive, metals and food processing industries.

Most of AMTRI's work comprises conceiving, planning, designing, developing, building, commissioning and installing cost-effective, and often highly innovative, bespoke, special purpose machinery and automation systems.

These may be turnkey systems for production, inspection or test, technology demonstrators or prototypes.

Its income is either fee-based or through collaborative research assistance from respectively, private sector clients, or UK government departments and the European Commission.

Transports to Sudan Very Healty on the Back of Energy Project Business Khartoum, Sudan (PRWEB) September 20, 2005 -- CNC Freight Services Sdn Bhd, Global Project Logistics Network member based in Port Klang, Malaysia, recently announced the successful execution of two air charters of Antonov 124 in July. CNC successfully delivered 200 metric ton of oilwell equipments which were urgently required by their customers in Sudan. CNC Freight Services Sdn Bhd is currently busy handling two projects for Malaysian EPCC clients who have secured different contracts in the oilfield and pipeline development projects at Sudan. Since September 2004, CNC shipped about 350 FEUs and well over 6000 freight tons of construction equipment and materials to Sudan. One of the two customers, Bentini NF Energy, a joint-venture company between Bentini of Italy and the Malaysian based Nam Fatt Corporation, has accounted for approx 200 FEUs and 5,000 m3 of breakbulk cargo during this time. Bentini NF Energy is an EPC contractor of six pumping facilities for Melut Basin Development Project in Blocks 3 and 7 in Upper Nile and White Nile states, which is one of the biggest oil investment projects in Sudan. Bentini NF Energy is expected to complete the pumping facilities by April of 2006. Melut Basin is an integrated project covering oil production in the fields until its export from the Peace Port at the cost of 1.7 billion dollars. The project produces about 200,000 barrels per day yet it is expected to increase to 500,000 barrels per day. The length of the pipeline for transporting oil is around 500 kilometers with a diameter of 32 inches. It begins from Faloog area in the Upper Nile and ends in the export ports in the Red Sea State, passing through White Nile, Khartoum and River Nile states. The pipeline capacity amounts to 500,000 barrels per day, starting with more than 150,000 BPD from 99 wells in Faloog field. In October 2004, Malaysian Peremba began construction of a USD 232 million marine export terminal for the Melut Basin Oil Development Project. The terminal, scheduled for completion in December 2005, will have a capacity of 2 million bbl/d. In handling the Antonov charters CNC Freight Services left no stone unturned, which included the company’s managing director traveling to Khartoum to oversea the cargo’s arrival. “CNC’s core expertise lies in the field of project cargo forwarding where we have strong track records in handling overdimensionals and heavylifts for various industries and clienteles,” says Patrick Lee, “and we showed what we were capable of in with the Sudan cargo but being an example. Handling overdimensional and heavy lifts has all the while been our forte.” CNC Freight Services Sdn Bhd is an international freight forwarding company in Port Klang, Malaysia, that specializes in project cargo forwarding. CNC is also a Global Project Logistics Network member in Malaysia. The Global Projects Logistics Network (GPLN) is a non-exclusive professional projects logistics group for independent companies specializing in international projects shipping by air, sea and land as well as specialized lifts and handling of oversized, out-of-gauge and heavy lift cargo.

CNC machine shops and CNC machine milling in general could very well be made for Machine Information Systems.

Why?

Because CNC cutting machines; such as a CNC plasma cutting machine, a CNC router table and CNC lathe machine, all perform repetitive tasks.
Yes ok so do other machines, but this particular breed of machines excel at doing this at frightening speeds.

CNC machine milling, cutting, drilling, grinding and lathing (can I actually say lathing? :-@) is done super fast under fully automatic computer controlled conditions.

Also in saying that, brings me nicely round onto . . .

What does CNC stand for?
Oh yes, you're right, I should mention that!

CNC stands for Computer Numerically Controlled.
What does THAT mean?

Righto . . .
This refers specifically to the method of computer control of the machines tools for the purpose of manufacturing complex parts repeatedly. Many types of machines can have a CNC variant:

- Lathes

- Milling machines

- Grinding wheels

- Drills

In an actual CNC production machine, all of these functions may be combined into one machine station allowing the continuous creation of a part by performing several machining operations sequentially.

If you have ever watched CNC machine milling it's quite facinating, swarf cuttings flying in all directions with cutting fluid spray. It makes you wonder how the part its making ever makes it out alive. Well that's what I thought when I first saw CNC machine milling in operation, I was quite impressed, anyway I digress.

CNC machines are nowadays driven directly from files created by CAD (Computer Aided Design) packages, so an assembly or part can go from design to production without any intermediate drawing work being required.

Ok ok, I know you knew that, I was just saying for the other people looking around this site. :-)

CNC machine milling is dedicated to batch manufacturing of a component in a continuous process. A lot of these are automotive machine tools for car parts. Have you ever wondered about the circular cut type marks seen on some car parts?

Even a CNC plasma cutting machine continuously cuts out parts unitil the very large sheets it cuts from is systematically covered. The arrangement of how the puzzle of parts covers the sheet is planned out to maximum efficiency within the CAD/CNC program.

Before starting, on a CNC plasma cutting machine, the CNC operator has to set the sheet to a datum point where the process starts from. Otherwise if this was not done the CNC plasma cutting machine may try to plasma cutting thin air off the edge of the sheet!!

CNC machine shops normally have quite a few variations of these machines in and to look around you probably think the operators aren't doing anything. The CNC machine would first be loaded up with the raw materials, the program downloaded to its memory (if it's not already there) and then all the covers closed. That's important, remember the swarf and spray!

The machine would then run until the raw material runs out, then it would be re-stocked and started up again. They are normally fully covered in because the cutting process uses loads of cutting fluid. Without covers it would be sprayed everywhere. (Believe me I know, whoops). But the covers aren't there just to stop making a mess though, they contain the cutting fluid within the machine. It drains to a sump, gets filtered and then get sprayed out again.

If you have read the machines page I'd imagine you'll have a good idea that this type of machine is well suited to machine information system. Hopefully this is more apparent now.

Also you would realise a collection of these machines would be quite noisy when running, ah ha another bonus. You wont have to go out into the machine shop to find out what they're doing production wise, with a machine information system installed.

Because it all happens under the cover guard doors with cutting fluid, it would be difficult to see how many parts have been made. Couple this up to their fast running speed and bingo, an ideal situation for a machine information system.

So, once installed within a CNC machine shop a machine information system could be quitely and accurately clocking up all the parts produced. At what rate and how efficiently without the need to even go near that noisy enviroment. That would be a bonus to me in my working day.

CNC machine shops do not generally form what you would deem a production line. More often than not, you would find each machine in a CNC machine shop doing a different unrelated task to all the rest of them.

This would be quite a usual scenario in such a CNC machine shop, because of the setup time involved for each CNC machine. This is because each CNC machine has to be programmed and set up with the tooling required for every single job it is made to do.

Therefore I'm sure you can see if we were talking about one of your CNC machine shops you wouldn't want to change 'em around too much, would you? To this ends, a CNC machine once set-up, will stay on that job until it's finished. Quite often, in the automotive machine tools scenario, a CNC machine milling car parts will spend it's life within a company just doing that.

As for fitting machine information systems within CNC machine shops, a retrofit of a system should also be fairly easy to do because of all the sensors a CNC machine uses to operate. You shouldn't have too much trouble finding signals to tap off for gathering data from. Just another bonus presented by these types of machines.