Small defects in the grain or major damage to a moulded part or tool can bring production to a standstill. SMEs in particular have neither the personnel nor the equipment to repair such damage on their own, so they send it to specialised contractors. The repair process is carried out manually, depending on the accuracy requirements, and is usually completed by a finishing process. This work requires qualified personnel and, at the same time, requires a lot of time in case of larger damages. In this paper we present a way to map the Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) process chain in a partially automated manner. The symbiosis of individual technologies results in a significantly increased efficiency of the MRO process chain, which continues to focus on people and their process knowledge. While Directed Energy Deposition (DED) for the MRO of moulded parts is used widely, usually a high manual effort in measuring the component geometries and teaching of the machine tool paths is necessary. However, there are clear advantages compared to the manufacture of new parts or manual laser welding repair. At the same time, the resource and energy requirements can often be significantly reduced compared to new part production. Promo focuses on automating the time-consuming machine programming by reducing the number of necessary work steps in CAD/CAM-based program creation. Based on a subsequent robot-guided scan, a digital actual 3D model is generated. Due to intelligent path planning algorithms, no manual programming of the robot is necessary and at the same time it is possible to detect components of different sizes, shapes and covers in this system with a minimum of effort. In addition, the operator passes on elementary information, such as the approach path of the milling head, to the subsequent processes by means of finger gestures and can thus significantly reduce tedious CAM programming steps. Now, the scanned component is transferred to a 3D-CAD model and a target/actual comparison is created for the damaged areas. Those are milled out in a defined manner and then restored using DED.
Die additive Reparatur von beschädigten Bauteilen und Formen ist häufig mit hohen Kosten verbunden. Durch die digitale Vernetzung wurde ein Mehrwert in der additiven und spanenden Reparatur geschaffen, der sowohl die Anlagenzeit und Ingenieurszeit reduziert und gleichzeitig auf variable Genauigkeitsanforderungen übertragbar ist. Anhand einer Turbinenschaufel wurde der Reparaturprozess getestet und kann in der Zukunft auf beliebige Bauteile übertragen werden. The additive repair of damaged components and moulds is often associated with high costs, especially for SMEs. By digitally networking different components, an added value in additive and metal-cutting repair has been created, which reduces both machine time and engineering time and is at the same time transferable to variable accuracy requirements. The repair process was tested using a turbine blade and will be transferred to individual components in the future.
Das additive Fertigungsverfahren Laser-Powder Directed Energy Depositon (LP-DED), kombiniert mit automatisierten Reverse-Engineering-Ansätzen, bietet die Möglichkeit, Bauteile effizient zu reparieren. Durch intelligente Algorithmen können im sogenannten Scangineering 3D-Scandaten von Bauteilen vorverarbeitet, ausgerichtet und parametrisiert werden. Die erkannten geometrischen Defekte werden zur Errechnung der Werkzeugwege für den additiven Aufbau verwendet und mittels des LP-DED-Prozesses aufgeschweißt und repariert. Dabei kommen vor allem die Vorteile der flexiblen Prozessführung, ein hoher Automatisierungsgrad und gute Reproduzierbarkeit zum Tragen.
Many of the large components of modern gas turbines are cast, resulting in rough surface profiles, which have to be machined to achieve the component’s final state. As there are high deviations in casting components, the real geometry does not meet the ideal model dimensions and is known neither to the supplier nor to the customer. While manual 3D-scanning processes, heavily depending on the operator’s qualification, get more attention, conventional means are still the basis for quality assurance of such parts. Although significant time reduction can be reached by automated scanning, there is still a low variety of corresponding applications for large components on the market. Flexible systems are an approach for further development as most of the manufacturers handling large components already have and use machine tools for the processing of their components. The designed and implemented prototypical system allows the acquisition of a large component’s surface with only a few manual inputs prior to the actual scanning procedure. It can be used with existing machining tools, allowing an easy implementation for different use cases of a pre-manufacturing scan, e.g. for CAM planning. The application is implemented in a small software tool that can be adapted to other machines with low effort. The implementation has been demonstrated in a real manufacturing environment with typical environmental conditions in the shop floor. The prototypical application has been built mainly with existing components. Following the V-Model, each domain has been investigated individually followed by a complete system investigation. With a system price below 100.000€ the price is below 10% of most automated systems on the market. The presented cost efficient, low complexity prototypical system can provide early information about the product for a digital process chain in industry 4.0, enabling flexible, intuitive and easy integration.
Kurzfassung Reverse Engineering (RE), teilweise missverständlich als Kopieren von Konkurrenzprodukten verstanden, gehört zu den Engineering-Werkzeugen, deren Bedeutung in den kommenden Jahren weiter stark zunehmen wird. Obwohl seit geraumer Zeit im Einsatz, beruhen eine Vielzahl von Tätigkeiten, die zur Erzeugung von Modellen bestehender Bauteile dienen, auf manuellen, stark Know-how abhängigen Prozessen. Die Weiterverwendung der Modelle, wie z. B. in CAM-Systemen, geschieht ebenso manuell und beinhaltet zur Erzeugung des NC-Codes eine Vielzahl von repetitiven Aufgaben für den Anwender. Das hier beschriebene scanbasierte System widmet sich der automatisierten Scandurchführung, Modellaufbereitung und Bereitstellung für Folgeprozesse. Der Herausforderung dafür, kostengünstige Scanhardware zu verwenden, konnte hier Rechnung getragen werden. In einem übergreifenden automatisierten Reparaturprozess kann diese Scaneinheit bauteilunabhängig eingesetzt werden.
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