Title:

Pratt and Whitney Grinding Cell Automation

The scope of the entire project went slightly beyond what Dan and myself were tasked with. The project is very new (first started last summer) and is expected to be completed over the course of about 5 years. Essentially, Pratt & Whitney are looking to automate the production process behind one of the turbine seals they manufacture as the customer demand continues to rise for this part. The complete automation of grinding cell like this involves multiple systems working simultaneously to achieve a common goal. The robot needs to be able to accurately pick up and place parts in the grinder where an automated fixture locates the part where it needs to go. Our main focus throughout this project has been to design this automated fixture, as well as hopping on some of the other work being done. At this point, the grinder will run while the previously ran part is being cleaned off and placed in a CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine) to check the dimensional accuracy of each new feature. After this, the machine will automatically take that dimensional data and update its offsets accordingly. This entire process, if done correctly, should be able to run independently and indefinitely.

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