One of Europe's leading Designers and manufacturers of models and components for aerodynamic assessment in wind tunnel environments, Future Advanced manufacture have significantly reduced the production time for aerospace components using a powerful multi-axis drilling application designed for them by Vero International Software. Cheltenham, UK-based Future advanced Manufacture specialise in manufacturing high precision, high performance and safety critical components, offering project management, design and prototyping facilities alongside batch production of complex assemblies. One area of particular expertise is in the manufacture and development of new wing shapes.

Having first installed VISI software in 1997, Future has worked closely with Vero and now operates seven seats running on a network license throughout 10 PC workstations.

After several years experience of using Vero, Future Advanced Manufacture had confidence that Vero could help them develop a dedicated application for micro-drilling of aerospace components.

Part of the process of manufacturing wings for aircraft involves drilling minute surface holes into the components so that they can be pressure tested within a wind tunnel.

Micro-tubes the size of hypodermic needles are fitted to connect each of these holes to pressure sensing equipment inside the model.

It is also necessary to drill 1mm diameter holes up to 300mm long to connect these surface features and invariably these are all running at differing vectors.

The technical brief then was for up to 350 holes per wing (ranging from 0.3mm-1mm) to be precisely positioned and to be perpendicular to the surface at that point.

At that time, the only feasible approach to the problem was a series of steps to calculate the vector direction and rotations for each compound hole - a task that was time consuming, cumbersome and with a high potential for error.

This involved creating a line that defined the vector through the centre of the hole, and then a calculation of two angles and two rotations that would enable true alignment of the hole for drilling down its vertical Z-axis.

At each stage of the process, angle values had to be written down along with the final X, Y and Z and depth values for each hole.

Having to perform this sequence for typical parts with more than 100 holes meant many hours and even days worth of effort, before any of this information could be passed down to the manual 7-axis EDM machines.

The bespoke solution provided by Vero was developed in two stages.

The original specification provided by Future was to provide a solution for quickly identifying all the compound holes, including the diameter, depth, positional co-ordinates and the rotations required to manufacture each hole.

The initial request was to output this information in a table format that could then be passed to the machine operator who would then use this information to produce each required hole.