Background
This project was funded through an ARM Institute Project Call that sought to respond to pervasive areas of need in U.S. manufacturing and, specifically, address key Department of Defense (DoD) manufacturing-focused Modernization Priorities. This and the other selected projects address issues found by the DoD and commercial community to be the most urgent and important that the ARM Institute’s ecosystem of 330+ member organizations can help solve.
Objective & Technical Approach
The project team will focus on enabling high-precision adaptive machining of complex cooling circuits in high temperature materials through the development of an open architecture framework that integrates sensor data and automatically adjusts tool paths and process parameters to achieve an optimal solution for laser drilling. Sensing will be used both to inspect for variability in the incoming part and in-process to monitor progress of the machining operation. This project will reduce scrap rate through improved process control & repeatability and create a framework which allows for easy interchange of alternative tools and/or sensors to fit the end-user’s target application.
Participants
Principal Investigator: GE Research
Partners: GrayMatter Robotics, FANUC