Manufacturers of aircraft and their suppliers place extremely high demands on production processes. Tailored, economic and energy efficient processes are required for all components and materials. These processes must also be suitable for rapid integration into the ongoing production workflow. In addition to a high level of availability, the industry also places great value on process reliability, particularly with manufacturing processes that are replacing manual operations as part of automation work. What's more, the stringent and internationally recognised HSE requirements (HSE = health, safety and environment) that are designed to bring about better working conditions for employees also need to be taken into account.
The ECOSPEED machining centre offers our customers suitable solutions in this regard. Thanks to its parallel kinematic machining head, the machine is the most productive piece of equipment on the market for processing structural components made of aluminium. The dimensions of the parallel kinematic head, which offer little scope for movement, reduce the manufacturing time for an aluminium component (2.2 m x 0.35 m x 0.3 m) by 87% from 25 to 3.5 hours compared with the same process an old gantry machine. What's more, the time required for reworking workpieces is reduced by over 50% thanks to the high-quality surface produced during the machining work.
Even those considered to be regular customers, such as Moyola Precision Engineering Ltd from Castledawson in Northern Ireland, are impressed by this fact. The first ECOSPEED machine was ordered by the chairman and owner of the company, Raymond Semple, back in 2004 following a truly unbelievable experience. "Milling a wing rib for an Airbus A320 suddenly took just two hours on the ECOSPEED, compared to the 7.8 hours required on the previous machine we used", the company owner recalls. "I just couldn't believe it."
The ECOSPEED also achieves a level of availability of up to 98% thanks to the simple technology for five-axis machining. Complex fork-type milling heads are no longer required.
