Honeycomb Seal Cutting Automation

Objective (What?): Hi Tech Honeycomb is a leading manufacturing firm that delivers high quality honeycomb products for aerospace suppliers around the world. The objective of the project is to increase output of special honeycomb parts by automating the cutting process. 

Our Design (How?): A custom clamping and fixture assembly mounted to precise, motorized translation and rotation stages. The two degrees of freedom provided by these stages allow for rapid, automated positioning of the stock beneath the cutting tool.

Achievements (Why?): The prototype was successful in achieving a much higher production speed: approximately 60 seconds to produce a part. After calibrating for saw blade behavior, produced parts fell within a tolerance range of 0.01 inches. This performance does not yet match the accuracy and precision of the manual process, where skilled workers consistently produce parts with deviations limited to just 25% of the total allowable tolerance from the nominal dimension.