
BERHALTER Tec-Spiration Showcases High-Precision Manufacturing Excellence with Support from Starrag Technology
BERHALTER Tec-Spiration, a trusted system supplier to the aeronautics, aerospace, mechanical engineering, and defence sectors, has…
Starrag develops and produces manufacturing solutions for many of the leading manufacturers in the aerospace industry. To shorten the measuring times for turbine blades, the Swiss company was the first in the world to work with the ZEISS PRISMO fortis CMM as part of a pilot project.
Customers react with fascination and great amazement when they see how accurately and quickly turbine blades can be measured on a ZEISS PRISMO fortis with ZEISS CMM Acceleration Mode for aerospace applications. Roland Ziltener, Plant Director at Starrag AG, Rorschacherberg, understands the amazement of his colleagues. “Speed and maximum precision didn’t go together for a long time.” In the aerospace industry, where components such as turbine blades must be thoroughly inspected after each production step: “Quality assurance, therefore, quickly becomes a bottleneck. To ensure reliable and profitable production, you need speedy and reliable feedback as to whether the components meet the high-quality requirements.”
Customer requirements have top priority.
Customers from all over the world come to Rorschacherberg with their specific tasks to obtain suitable machining centres to produce turbine blades, blisks, impellers, casings and other aircraft applications. Starrag designs the respective production solution with the appropriate fixtures based on the specified requirements for the number of units or running time of the components. Customers often want a complete solution that ranges from machine and tool to metrology programming. According to Ziltener: “Starrag is not only familiar with the requirements of the industry but is also at the cutting edge of technology in many areas, including measurement technology.”
Pilot projects secure market leadership.
For Ivan Nytsch, Head of Global Customer Segment Aerospace at ZEISS, Starrag is ‘an ideal pilot customer’. This is also because the provider of complete solutions is very familiar with its customers’ manufacturing processes. And this is where things come full circle for Nytsch. ZEISS also understands its customers’ processes and develops customised solutions. ZEISS has responded to the aerospace industry’s challenge of measuring aerospace components with high precision, reliability and speed by expanding the PRISMO family with the ZEISS PRISMO 7/12/7 fortis CMM
Fascination for a new solution
Roland Ziltener, who was Head of Quality Management at Starrag, remembers the project well. “We had a look at the machine in Oberkochen and were immediately impressed.” To check whether the new development delivers the required precision despite the considerable optimisation of the measuring time, all turbine blades manufactured by Starrag on behalf of partner customers were measured with the ZEISS PRISMO fortis over 18 months. As the size, material and geometry of the turbine blades are different, the machine was “widely tested”, according to Ziltener. To evaluate the accuracy of the ZEISS PRISMO fortis, the measurement results were compared with reference values from the ZEISS PRISMO navigator. As both CMMs were in the same measuring laboratory, it was possible to rule out external factors influencing the results.
During the pilot phase, Ziltener and Nytsch agreed that Starrag and ZEISS worked closely together. For example, the measurement data was discussed together in regular meetings. ZEISS used this information to optimise further the start-up and acceleration behaviour of the rotary table and the machine. ZEISS also simplified the usability of the machine and the creation of test plans during the pilot phase. The performance of the ZEISS PRISMO fortis equipped with the ZEISS CMM Acceleration Mode for aerospace applications package still impresses Ziltener today.
Turbine blades and blisks are not only subject to stringent requirements but also cost companies a lot of money. Experience has shown that quality assurance accounts for 20% of total production costs and 25% of total production time. The pilot project showed that productivity in the measurement of turbine blades can be significantly increased with ZEISS PRISMO fortis. The standard measurement, which took four minutes and 30 seconds at Starrag and delivered accurate and reproducible results, was reduced to 70 seconds during the pilot phase. This saves time, “which gives us greater flexibility in the selection of parameters and workpieces to be measured and helps us to optimise our production processes,” emphasises Ziltener.
Starrag acquired the measuring machine at the end of the pilot project to measure turbine blades, which are produced as a proof of concept during the acceptance of the machining centres assembled at the site by the customer. The turbine blades, which are machined for a handful of customers at the Aerospace & Turbine Competence Centre, continue to be inspected using the ZEISS PRISMO fortis.
For Ziltener, Starrag has set new standards in quality assurance with this pilot project in an industry that requires the highest precision in production and quality control. For him, having been involved in the measurement of turbine blades since 2008, the collaboration with ZEISS was and is “a real success story”. A view that Nytsch also shares. Both are, therefore, certain that “the next pilot project will come.”
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