Robot polisher speeds lipskin production

California’s McStarlite makes recognizable parts for anyone who has seen an airplane. It has fabricated sheet metal parts for the aerospace industry for decades including lipskins, the doughnut-shaped rim that attaches to the front of an aircraft engine’s housing. This metal rim is machined and shaped so air flows smoothly around the engine.

Once shaped, it’s then polished, which was traditionally done by hand. The work was hard – taking a toll on a worker’s back, legs, and arms – and inefficient. Additionally, hand polishing could produce inconsistent quality in the finished parts, depending on the worker’s skill and technique.

McStarlite’s management made the decision to automate, adding a Kuka robot programmed with Hypertherm’s Robotmaster software. Instead of hand-polishing lipskins for Airbus A350 airplanes, the robot is doing all the work.

“Automation is something we had been wanting to do for more than a decade…automation standardizes the finish and consistency, and improves our cycle time, which we’ve been able to cut down by two-thirds,” Saravanan Rajaram, quality assurance at McStarlite explains.

Reducing cycle times and increasing production were factors for McStarlite, but the company also appreciates Robotmaster’s simple user interface that makes it easier to teach employees to program the Kuka robot.

“We are very proud that we kept the same people doing the manual labor and trained them to be operators. Robotmaster’s simplicity of use enabled us to repurpose the people to use the robot. Even operators with basic education can use/program the robot, eliminating the need to hire specially trained operators,” adds Dimitar Nasev, a vice president at McStarlite.

“The optimization capabilities are absolutely brilliant. I’ve done a little bit of programming, trouble-shooting errors and correcting them is a complicated and time-consuming process. Robotmaster made the process very simple, reducing the time to program the part,” Rajaram notes.

McStarlite can now maximize profits and quote lower prices on future jobs. The company plans to add more robot cells, such as a rotary table it can use to polish larger parts such as full engine cowlings.

Hypertherm

McStarlite Co.

About the author: Michelle Avila is Hypertherm’s communications manager. She can be reached at michelle.avila@hypertherm.com.