Airbus A400M CAWDE
Features
The CAWDE machine features include:
- Fully automatic CNC control and data collection
- 5-axis positioning within the entire wing skin envelope, 30m x 5m x 1m
- Machine transporter to move the machine from jig to jig
- Servomotor/ball screw joint pressure from 900-9000N (approx 200-2000lbf) during drilling and fastening
- Drilling and countersinking holes for 1/4” to 3/4” diameter bolts through multi material stacks of carbon fiber, aluminum, and titanium
- Automated hole diameter measurement of 1/4” to 5/8” diameter holes
- Automatic detection of manually installed slave bolts prior to drilling
- Automatic insertion of 1/4” to 5/8” diameter slave dowels for temporary fastening during the build
- Space on the process shuttle table for a future process tool
The drilling process is supported by through-bit and external flood coolant systems and chip vacuum with coolant recovery.The machine is equipped with sensors and synchronization tools to help align the machine with varying geometry components. These include:
- Normality Sensors:
- Track surface of wing skin
- Provide feedback data to machine CNC
- Allows head positioning to be normal to actual surface
- Camera for manual resynchronization
- Renishaw Touch Probe
- Radio Frequency probe fits in drill spindle
- Find hole centers
- Determine Z position of a pad
- Locate part edge
- Thru Skin Sensor
- Looks through the wing skin and finds the center of the magnetic field of magnets that are placed in pre-drilled pilot holes in the wing structure behind the wing skin
