Phillip Smart | Adelaide
This topped a year that also saw the first Marand-built tails (each shipset containing 30 BAE Systems titanium components machined in Adelaide) mated to F-35 serial AF-73 at the Fort Worth plant in Texas, and export of the first spars from BAE Systems’ third and largest titanium machining system, the $10 million BTP 5000, commissioned in December 2013 at Edinburgh Parks.
The “BTP” stands for Big Titanium Profiler and the beast is worthy of the moniker. It’s a 200 tonne self-contained system designed by Swiss manufacturer Starrag with input from BAE Systems. It arrived in 23 shipping containers, took six months to assemble and test and is still one of only two of its type in the world – the other with BAE Systems at Samlesbury in the UK. Solidly planted on its specialist concrete footings in a humidity and temperature controlled environment, the plant bears a passing resemblance to house-sized laser printer.
Titanium billets and sheets are clamped to a tombstone bed on top of the machine, before being lowered vertically and secured to face two high-speed machining spindles that work horizontally. As titanium is particularly hard on machine tools, the system monitors their calibration and automatically changes tools before they affect the piece in work. The BTP 5000’s tool caddy will hold 408 tools to maximise production time.
The BTP allows BAE Systems to machine titanium parts up to five metres long, to tolerances of 30 microns, or half the width of a human hair. Its arrival allowed the Adelaide facility to move in to manufacturing the “long thin” fore and aft vertical spars that are part of the JSF tail’s internal structure, adding to the smaller components it has produced with smaller machines in Adelaide since 2009.
BAE Systems is in the middle of machining and assembly work for 48 long thin spars from August 2014 to May 2015, which will be treated and painted by Rosebank Engineering before despatch to Marand in Victoria and BAE Systems in the UK, which is also building tail assemblies for JSF. The company expects a peak production rate of 190 components per month.
BAE Systems UK has an Industrial Participation Requirement to source the production and assembly of 722 vertical tail fin ship sets for the Conventional Take Off and Landing (CTOL) variant of the JSF from Australia. And although BAE Systems has secured JSF work, its advanced manufacturing investment may also lead to new opportunities in defence and other sectors like commercial aviation.
BAE Systems Manufacturing Projects and Performance Manager Peter Serdar said the Adelaide facility’s experience with two smaller machining systems, and training and assistance from BAE Systems in the UK, have helped bring the BTP 5000 on line quickly. And the local team has learned fast.
“We had our people in Samlesbury for training and familiarisation, and when the BTP-5000 arrived we had personnel from the UK to help us,” he said. “But as our own people have become familiar with the system we have needed less of a flow of advice and help from the UK, and in fact now the flow of ideas sometimes goes the other way too.”
On the day of ADM’s visit the BAE Systems team, from Land and Integrated Systems director Graeme Bent down, had an air of quiet pride and enthusiasm for the system; the mark of engineers who relish the opportunity to be heavily involved with new technologies that are leading edge, ground breaking and A Bit Different. Several happily recounted coming in on weekends to see milestones in the centre’s construction, such as pouring of the specialist cement floor.
For Serdar, an experience while managing another sector of BAE Systems’ production has driven his views on the culture and approach he wants to see in the advanced manufacturing area.
“I visited an aircraft production line that was using components we’d made,” he said. “On the line I watched assemblers unpack our components and fit them straight to the aircraft. No more inspection, no more checking, they just trusted them to be right because of the processes they had been through before arriving at the production line. That had a great effect on me in how I approach quality control in our own facility.”