McStarlite is a California-based company that manufactures parts for the aerospace industry. Like lip liners, they are the doughnut-shaped lip that sticks to the front of an aircraft’s engine casing. This metal rim is machined and molded so that air flows smoothly around the engine. The traditional way of polishing lip skins was traditionally done by hand.
McStarlite management decided to automate by installing a Kuka robot that was programmed with Hypertherm’s Robotmaster software. Instead of polishing the lips of the Airbus A350 planes by hand, the robot does it all.
McStarlite QA Manager Saravanan Rajaram commented:
“For more than a decade, we wanted to automate…Automation reduces our cycle time, which we have been able to reduce by two-thirds, while standardizing finish and consistency.”
McStarlite was interested in reducing cycle times and increasing productivity, appreciating Robotmaster’s simple user interface, which made it easy to teach employees how to program the Kuka robot.
According to Dimitar Nasev, vice president of McStarlite, he is satisfied with what they have achieved by automating the polishing process with Kuka robots, allowing them to retain and train their staff Due to the ease of use of Robotmaster.
The ability to optimize is simply fantastic. I have done some programming, and troubleshooting and repairing problems is a difficult and time-consuming procedure. According to Rajaram, Robotmaster made the process incredibly easy, reducing the time needed to program the part.
Now the company can increase profitability and quote reduced prices for future projects. More robot cells are on the way, including a turntable for polishing larger items.
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