Trimming aircraft seat components

Citation

(2002), "Trimming aircraft seat components", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 74 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2002.12774fab.002

Trimming aircraft seat components

Trimming aircraft seat components

Keywords: Aircraft, Components, Trimmers

It is reported that volume production of vacuum formed ABS aircraft seat spare parts has been made more cost effective by a RYE CMS Easy CNC trimming machine recently installed at B.E. Aerospace (UK) Ltd in Leighton Buzzard (Plate 2). According to production engineer David Turner, many components are trimmed in a tenth of the time taken previously by manual methods, and they can now use flow production techniques, with each component being trimmed in the time it takes to vacuum form the next.

Plate 2 The RYE CMS Easy CNC trimming machine at B.E. Aerospace

B.E. Aerospace is a group of companies manufacturing aircraft interiors for the airline and OEM industry world-wide. The Leighton Buzzard factory specialises in making ABS spare parts for the maintenance of seats and the replacement of seat accessories, such as meal trays and video control housings. The production team had recognised that manual trimming of vacuum formed components had become both a bottleneck in the production process and a substantial sub-contracting cost, since a large part of the factory’s production was being sent to subcontractors to be trimmed. So they started looking for a CNC trimming machine that would be available within their budget during the early part of 2001.

“Nearly all the machines we saw offered machining envelopes far larger than we needed” explained David Turner. “All our components are quite small, the largest needing an envelope of about 0.4 m × 0.1 m. What we needed was a compact high precision machine that was fast.”

The team also recognised from the outset that they needed a machine with twin pallets so that loading and unloading could take place on one pallet while trimming was being carried out on the other. We are told that when they saw the Easy at RYE CMS in High Wycombe, no more than an hour away by road from their factory, they knew they had found what was needed.

The Easy is described as a budget-priced compact high-speed five-axis CNC machine designed specifically for trimming thermoplastic mouldings, with control technology ideal for incorporation into companies’ existing toolrooms. Aimed also at small companies not previously able to afford CNC technology, the Easy has an X-axis travel of 1,000 mm, a Y-axis travel of 1,200 mm and a Z-axis travel of 650 mm, so is said to be capable of handling substantial components. Two further rotational axes with extremely fast rotational speeds of up to 120,000 per min are provided by the machining head. These enable the machine to trim at every angle likely to arise, the high rotational speed providing very short cycle times and very high productivity.

The Osai 10/510 controller has a built-in PC to provide Windows compatibility, and can be linked via Ethernet or RS232 communications to a PC for off-line programming. All CNC signals are transmitted by fibre-optic cables to eliminate electronic interference and noise. The controller provides simultaneous control of six interpolated axes with linear, circular and helicoidal interpolation.

A separate portable Teach-in programming console is said to make it possible to programme the Easy simply by following the points of machining around a component with the console’s built-in probe. This speeds programming dramatically and minimises off-line costs.

The Easy CNC trimming machine was installed at Leighton Buzzard in November 2001 and has rapidly made its presence felt in dramatically shorter trimming times, saved subcontracting costs and higher quality.

“Components that took us 15 min to trim using templates now take us 30 s to 1 min, with much greater precision” confirmed David Turner. “Wastage is virtually eliminated and no trimming is now sub-contracted.”

He explained that the company used to vacuum form a batch of a given component, then pass them to a trimming team, or out to a sub-contractor, for trimming. Now the Easy trimming machine keeps pace with the vacuum forming machine, so each component can be trimmed while the next is being moulded.

“The machine is even enabling us to quote successfully for five-axis trimming work from sister companies in the group” he said. “That’s a significant new source of earnings.”

Asked about the service and support that the company had received from RYE CMS, David Turner was enthusiastic.

“RYE CMS service and support has been very good” he said. “We would rather have a supplier about an hour down the road than one that is in another country.”

RYE CMS is the joint enterprise announced in 2001 between Rye Technology, the UK manufacturer of CNC routers, and CMS S.p.A. of Zogno, Italy, known worldwide for its CNC routers and machining centres. RYE CMS now has one of Britain’s most extensive ranges of CNC routers and machining centres and holds extensive stocks of spares and consumables to enable its nationwide team of service and support engineers to provide fast effective routine maintenance on all CMS and RYE machines.

Details available from: RYE CMS Ltd, Tel: +44 (0)1494 441211; Fax: +44 (0) 1494 440345; E-mail: sales@rve-cms.com; Web site: www.rye-cms.com