Level 3 Inspection Successfully Deploys Smart Inspection Station

Level 3 Inspection has successfully applied its patent-pending Smart Inspection Station (SiS) to dimensionally inspect production parts for the F135 jet engine. The Pratt & Whitney F135 is an advanced turbofan jet engine for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II single-engine Joint Strike Fighter, and requires some of the most demanding precision manufactured parts and dimensional inspections in the world, the company states.

According to Level 3 Inspection, the entire process of automated system CAI (computer-aided inspection) starts with capturing and merging the 3D scans while the SiS robotic parts presenter moves the part to present all of the needed part surfaces to the 3D scanner. Then the integrated process analyzes the 3D scan file with the inspection routine to extract all of the dimensions and produces the multiple inspection reports and stores them on the network. The entire process occurs in parallel processing in low double-digit minutes, without human intervention after simply placing the part in the gripper and bar-code scanning the paper router.

“Many of these jet engine components have very many, very small features and exceptionally tight tolerances; and dimensional conformance is simply imperative. We’ve helped many parts producers who have experienced difficulty inspecting those components with traditional metrology,” says Bill Greene, CEO at Level 3 Inspection. “Once the part number program is developed and tested, complexity is nearly free with our advanced CAI from high-accuracy 3D Scanning (3DS) process. The program runs completely integrated and fully automated on the SiS, to produce the comprehensive dimensional inspection reports needed to release First Article Inspection parts for production, and volume production parts for assembly.”

For more information, visit Level 3 Inspection.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.