CRV7 Semi-Automated Sealant Application System Design
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Date
2013-12-02
Authors
Bahl, Avi
Clendenan, Michael
Kabel, Tyler
Kalita, Conrad
Reimer, Justin
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Abstract
The grease sealant application process for the CRV7 rocket is an operation which applies a continuous ring of grease sealant on the fitting area where the rocket nozzle is inserted to the motor body. The purpose of the grease is to act as a barrier against hot gases produced by the rocket propellant during flight. The existing process at Magellan Aerospace’s Rockwood facility requires an operator to index rockets between the transport carts and the grease sealant application machine, resulting in unnecessary labour costs. Additionally, the existing process produces inconsistent results; air pockets unpredictably appear in the ring output. Furthermore, the reliability of the machine is not satisfactory to the company employees, and for these reasons, a replacement process is required. The design solution proposed by Perfect 10 Consulting is a semi-automated, pneumatically powered, electrically controlled operation, which is divided into two isolated locations to conform to CSA-30 explosive environment regulations. The machine used to directly apply the grease sealant is a counter-weight balanced, manually guided applicator which indexes and processes one or more rocket motors without the need to remove them from their transport carts. This significantly reduces the cycle time by completely removing previous handling steps, along with dramatically reducing the amount of physical work required by an operator. The handheld applicator is suspended from a swinging boom rail which allows for full access to an entire cart of rocket motors, further reducing the cycle time as an entire cart can be processed without moving the rockets or the operator. Pneumatic power from the existing 110 [psi] infrastructure is used to power the machine, allowing for easy installation, while PLC control is used in an isolated location to digitally manage the state of the mechanics, improving the overall consistency in quality control of the product. The results of this report show the proposed design successfully improves the labour costs with a 50.4% (71.1% if used in dual module configuration) reduction in work time required to process a batch of rocket motors. With an estimated initial cost of $ 4554.37, the amount of rocket motors required to […]