A normal
machine is bought
for what it does.
Our machines are
bought for how
they do it and how
boradly we can
use it.
the first stage of validating the new machine simply didn’t
exist. Giddings and his colleagues had to take their plans to
suppliers and convince them that this was where the market
was headed.
“When this succeeds later this year,” he said, “we’ll be in a
position to go back and challenge the materials supply chain
and say, ‘we can do 2.5m, we can go twice as quick if you can get
me a 5m roll’. And that’s the level of ambition that’s gone into
pretty much all (iCAP) equipment.”
Even arriving at the original specs for the machinery was
tricky. Manufacturing equipment is usually purchased in
order to to produce a specific component at a specific rate. You
bring those requirements to market and someone builds you a
machine to do the job. But the NCC’s needs are different.
“A normal industrial machine is bought for what it does,”
said Giddings. “Our machines are bought for how they do it and
how broadly we can use it.”
If the UHRDC proves successful for wings, it will be
reprogrammed to take on a range of other jobs. This flexibility
is essential to justify that initial, taxpayer-backed investment.
“I need to be able to make Airbus’s wing this year and an
enormous wind turbine next year,” Giddings explained. “Then
later next year I need to be able to build a bridge. So we have
to be designing for a huge range of
product…we have to make machines
that are incredibly flexible and can do a
huge number of things in an industrially
representative way.
“We need to get (customers) to
the line of making their components,
without sacrificing the flexibility for
us to be able to spin round and help the
next person. So we design at a target,
April 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk 16
and also other targets that we’ve defined
that come next. And that’s quite difficult
to do.”
To come up with the specs for the
iCAP equipment, the NCC looked at the
goals of major R&D projects across the
UK and beyond, working backwards
to figure out the type of machinery
required. For the UHRDC in particular,
everything from operating temperature
and volume, to height from the floor,
speed and power delivery, was up for
grabs.
“We dragged in a huge amount of
expertise from Airbus and GKN, and we
sat in a room and we argued for about
two and half months,” said Giddings.
Once agreement on the parameters
had been decided, the specs then went
out for tender, where more tough
conversations took place.
“We provided a functional
description of what every part of that
The UHRDC uses
twin robots that fire
ultrasonic waves
through jets of water
in order to measure
the accuracy of the
structures produced
within the cell
manufacturing
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