Leading Robotics and Automation company, Astech Projects, have successfully supplied a bespoke automated Turbine Blade Masking System to a leading UK Aerospace company. The client’s key objectives were an increase in throughput, accuracy and masking quality which Astech successfully achieved with the use of Astech’s Relovex software technology, three industrial robots and a sophisticated high-speed machine vision system incorporating laser positioning.
Astech’s fully automated system was developed to mask complex areas of aircraft turbine blades to avoid precious metal coverage during the manufacturing process. This unique and innovative system will have the capability to mask fourteen blade variants, with the functionality to add additional blade variants in the future. The system was designed and manufactured in the UK at Astech’s Cheshire facility.
The fully automated system incorporates a 3-axis cartesian robot, two 6-axis robots working synchronously utilising a single robot program, high-definition vision system, masking dispensing system and UV curing station to provide a solution offering significant process improvements including labour saving, masking accuracy to 0.1mm, higher throughput, reliability and repeatability.
Astech Business Development Manager for Industrial Automation, Craig Hamilton commented “Astech’s solution was designed to meet the stringent requirements outlined in the client’s user requirements specification. The initial Proof of Concept stage was vital in convincing the aerospace team Astech had the technical ability to achieve the positional accuracy required for such a challenging automation application. It is further reinforcement of Astech’s exceptional ability to take a difficult advanced manufacturing challenge and turn it into operational reality.”
For further information on Astech Projects and its complete portfolio of products and services, please visit
Astech Projects Follow on Twitter @AstechProjects, LinkedIn and Facebook.
