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Continued...
The A380 creep forming tooling incorporates several innovative
features. For example, it can be adjusted to fine-tune the skin shapes, which
kept the transition from prototype to full production to a minimum. This feature
also allowed the tooling to be manufactured concurrently with the aerodynamic
design process at Airbus, which greatly reduced the overall project lead-time
from concept to production. Waiting for the wing design to be completed before
starting to manufacture the tooling would have greatly extended the schedule.
Bennetts also carried out intensive testing with suppliers of all
the manufacturing processes to ensure that profiles cut straight from the CAD
production drawings could go directly to a final laser profile check without the
need for full trial assembly or intermediate checks. This not only produced the
secure supply routes required by the project but also reduced lead-times and
costs.
The aerodynamic configuration data for the wing panels produced by
Airbus, using a specially developed predictive modelling application, had to be
manipulated to allow it to be transferred into Bennett's Catia V5 CAD software.
The company created its own computer programmes for this task. |
