Early in 1995, Westinghouse decided to seize an opportunity to speed up the implementation of a design upgrade for the 501FA Row 2 vane segment. The planned upgrade of this vane segment had been in the conceptual design stage for a few months. Normally, this type of modification would be planned and implemented over many months. In order to achieve the desired performance goals and meet the customer’s delivery requirements this project would have to move very quickly. The project time frame required that from the conceptual drawing to start of production be no more than eight weeks.
To achieve the accelerated schedule, Westinghouse decided to team with the part machining suppliers to develop a game plan that allowed for true concurrent engineering. The resulting plan was to complete the part design at the same time that all the machining tooling and manufacturing process development was being completed. As a result of combining the resources of the turbine manufacturer with those of the machining vendors, it was possible to implement a complicated part upgrade in a matter of weeks not months.
By utilizing 3-D computer models to define the part configuration as well as to build the machining tools and develop the machining process, the team was able to meet the challenge. The final design was optimized for performance as well as ease of manufacturing. This paper describes the triumphs as well as some of the problems that the team encountered along the way to delivering the final engine hardware.
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