Focus Area: Reliability Improvement (Hardware)

Contact

Edward Mihalko
e.mihalko@agfm.com
757-621-7503

The GFM organization is a custom machine builder and operates globally in a variety of industries, such as the steel, automotive, aircraft, and defense industries. For over 70 years, we have been developing machines for a wide variety of production technologies. Included are radial forging machines, ultrasonic cutting machines, high speed routers and tape laying machines for composites.

GFM Radial Forging technology provides a leading-edge solution for the production of steel and specialty alloys. Additionally, we can provide turnkey solutions for high volume production of hollow components such as rifled firearm barrels, lightweight components for defense vehicles and turbine blade preforms. Complimentary technologies can be integrated to provide a fully automated manufacturing cell.

Our Ultrasonic Cutting, tape laying, and routing technologies are used extensively in the aviation and defense industry as part of the production process for composite aircraft components in both commercial and military sectors. These technologies can be combined with peripheral technologies to create complete manufacturing solutions for the composites industry.

GFM is developing solutions to automate composite repair to improve and modernize the composites repair process by developing stationary and portable solutions, based on our core machine tool technologies. These systems will allow for enhanced efficiency, accuracy, and will prove to be cost-effective for both commercial and military sectors. NDI, digitizing, laser paint removal and laser projection are among the technologies that can be integrated into the automated repair solution.

GFM is well suited to provide automated manufacturing and maintenance/repair innovations for our nation’s defense organizations.

Composite Repair

Problem Statement:

  • The frequency of minor accidental damage during the service life of composite structures has become high, and the resultant repair work has a significant impact on maintenance costs
  • Existing manual repair procedures are outdated, error prone and exhaustive
  • The repair method is not suitable for on-site repair because of lack of knowledge, skills or equipment, which is a time, cost or logistical burden
  • A validation of the repair to predict the further service life is not possible either simply due to missing data, records or due to quality fluctuations of repair work

 

Technology Solution Statement:

GFM Advanced 5-axis milling/scarfing machine with
advanced CNC machining and programming capabilities.

  • After machining, the machining path is used to determine the
    exact geometry of the required repair plies.
  • Open control to add all necessary functions (e.g.
    digitizing,NDI) to the editing and process recording functions.
  • Integrated database for repair philosophy and continuous
    further development of best practice concepts

Benefits Statement:

  • GFM high-precision CNC technology eliminates the effects of human error
  • Complex task, but easy to use, facilitated by automatic repair program and geometry of repair plies generation
  • Versatile and robust equipment with flexibility to handle a wide range of repair applications
  • Suitable for larger volumes of repeatable part types such as rotor blades, leading edges, etc. that can be removed from vehicle.
  • Effective and automatic application of the best practice repair strategies.
  • Recording and tracking of the history enables future predictability of the further life cycle.