Inside a Next-Gen Aerospace Machine Shop Running 24/7 Lights-Out | Shop Tour

What does modern aerospace manufacturing actually look like? At Acutec Precision Aerospace, staying competitive means building a shop floor around automation, real-time data, and continuous improvement. This is not a traditional machine shop.

It is a next-generation manufacturing environment designed to run 24/7 with lights-out machining, lean cells, and fully integrated inspection. In this episode of the Shop Tour Series from Manufacturing Connected, we go inside Acutec’s facility to see how advanced technology and smart process design are reshaping production.

You will see how this team:

• Machines Inconel aerospace components around the clock
• Uses automation to increase throughput and reduce strain on workers
• Integrates inspection directly into the machining process
• Leverages real-time data to drive continuous improvement
• Builds a modern workforce around advanced manufacturing technology

This is what it takes to compete in aerospace manufacturing today.

Transcript:

Brent Donaldson: So what does it take to stay competitive in aerospace manufacturing today? At Acutec Precision Aerospace, the answer is relentless improvement. Here in Meadville, Pennsylvania, we're stepping inside an employee owned company that has been methodically built around continuous improvement and automation. Machines are arranged in lean cells. Operators manage multiple systems, and custom software tracks performance in real time.

When it comes to high stakes aerospace components, Acutec shows what's possible when innovation meets discipline. Want to see what that transformation looks like in real time? Stick around and find out.

Luke, we're here at Acutec, tell us a little bit about what Acutec does, how you do it, and what sets you apart from from other manufacturing facilities? 

Luke Warner: Acutec is a primarily aerospace power generation company. And what sets us apart is our people, our technology and our continuous improvement efforts through automation, in addition to digital technology, that we employ here.

Brent Donaldson: And as far as what we're about to see on this tour, this is one of how many plants that you have?

Luke Warner: This is one of four, three of which are located in Pennsylvania, and the other, the fourth, is in Saint Stephen, South Carolina.

Brent Donaldson: And how many employees total?

Luke Warner: We're right around 520 employees currently.

So this next area we're going to go into is going to be hot side, engine components. 718 Inconel. One of the things that really sets us apart is that we're machining 718 inconel 24/7 lights out. So if we look behind us here, we have a first operation in a horizontal. We have five pallets, an RPS system there.

Now the part goes on a shunk fixture and a fixture travels with the part through machining operations, rather than loading that part at every operation over and over again. We'll see that downstream. After we're out of a horizontal, we go into a ten pallet, PH150 DMG Mori, connected to a DMU 50. And then from there we're going into two DMG Mori lathes, and then into a final five axis that also has a ten pallet RPS on it as well. All of that. About 17 hours total machining time per part, across all spindles. And we're able to again, like I said, run lights out 24/7 on these.

Brent Donaldson: So how many shifts do you run?

Luke Warner: We run two shifts. Run a first shift. And then we run a third shift. So the second shift, the gap is between first and third.

Brent Donaldson: So your dad started this shop, right?

Elisabeth Smith: Yeah. He, was one of the founding investors, and he rallied, a small core team and grew that, from 1993, until 2013, from 17 people to 350 people.

Brent Donaldson: Do you remember thinking, like, do you remember having an understanding of what your dad did?

Elisabeth Smith: Not really

Brent Donaldson: Not really. No. Yeah. I don't know that.

Elisabeth Smith: I know he was stressed a lot.

Brent Donaldson: Stressed out a lot? Oh, yeah?

Elisabeth Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Brent Donaldson: This is this is impressive. I mean, just looking around here, the guys at these stations are all pretty young.

Luke Warner: Yeah. Yeah. We have a younger workforce and, generally a happier workforce as well. They like to come, and they like to play with the technology. They like the the access to the technology. You know, sometimes you work in a machine shop where you're hunting for an unused insert edge out of a Folgers can. That's not the case here. These guys have exactly what they need when they need it, and I think that makes their jobs a little more satisfying.

Brent Donaldson: There's a lot of thought that goes into this. This doesn't just happen by accident. Oh we’re just going to slap this here. This is a good area for the monitors. 

Luke Warner: Yeah. Everything has a place, and there's a place for everything. You see, we have the 5S benches labeling. We have, sister tooling at the bottom here that maybe not be used on this job, but maybe on the next one. And again, that's that's testament to the part family strategy. So this machine being a nine axis Integrex can run anything. But we're saying we're going to put rod end parts here. So all this tooling is going to be built around cutting a rod end part instead of some of the other Integrex parts that we make that may be completely different, require different tooling.

Elisabeth Smith: I gave away 25% of the business like gave it away. Here's my thought. We had exit - Some of those original 17 people had retired. I didn't earn that, they they grew it. The people that were here before me, they earned that. I don't need any more equity in the company. So all of that original owner equity, I transferred over to the employees and the idea there is, listen, we're at the bottom of what we're going to be.

We had tremendous growth plans. 2019 was our record year. In fact, the first three months of 2020 were all record months for us. And then the bottom fell out. And so I said, all right, guys, we're going to build this back up. And you are going to benefit from the growth that you generate with this.

Luke Warner: So we automate for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes this capacity sometimes - capacity through throughput. And sometimes it's, it's, it's tasks that we don't want to waste our talented staff's time on. And sometimes it's ergonomics. So I don't have a capacity constraint for this part. I don't need this to run any more than I could have a human run it.

But we have a 60 pound billet that a human that probably doesn't want to lift several times a day, right? Into the machine. So this automation effort was designed to to kind of, you know, save employees back and allow them to go do something else, matching their skill level. So we have a little jib crane that will connect to a magnet to be able to pick the part up and swing it in. It'll load on the racking tray from the racking tray that that's as far as human has to to to go with handling a part manually. Although with the jib crane, and from there, the robot will load machine one, flip the part machine one, load machine two. And then stage the part finished, on the pallet.

Also, I do want to mention that this was in partnership with the ascend internship. Adam takes on automation interns very frequently throughout the summer. And they work through, like, a capstone project every year where this was one of those things really.

Brent Donaldson: You know, without. I've only seen what, 100 yards of the facility so far. But this is the kind of place that I would think if I was an intern, this would impress me as a modern, a modern factory, a modern machine shop. Sorry. But when you think of our our workforce issues, This seems like the kind of place that's going to get young people excited.

First of all, when we walk in the building, you have a sign up front that says CNC machinist needed. I imagine that's like a perennial sign. You just have it up all the time.

Elisabeth Smith: Absolutely.

Brent Donaldson: But what I also noticed was that the shop floor staff is pretty young. Congrats on that. Yeah. I guess what is your philosophy on, on investing back into the company and staying on top of technology and using automation to allow your staff to do cool things and not get burned out.

Elisabeth Smith: It's fun to let people explore, right? And get creative. And you have to balance that out with, you know, a return on that investment. But if you give people enough freedom to try things and hey, if that doesn't work, all right, try the next thing. What do we learn? When we have a scrap part. I always say, okay, we just invested $600 in learning something. What did we learn from that $600 investment?

Luke Warner: Jump over. I want to see a 1Factory and like what the machinist interface with. We can get that at a different work center.

Brent Donaldson: You guys use 1Factory?

Luke Warner: Yeah, we do use 1Factory.  We'll hit that up when we get down here. We'll go through how the machinist interfaces with 1Factory.

Brent Donaldson: Can I ask just real quick before we get too far, the way that you have this facility laid out. I just noticed a lot of inspection equipment right in the middle of the shop floor.

Luke Warner: Yeah, that's a great observation.

Brent Donaldson: So talk about the reason for that.

Luke Warner: Yep. So we have our in-process inspectors that live where the products are being developed. And they have their cycle count frequencies that they're hitting in real time. So that way when these parts get to final inspection, it's a visual when out the door, they're fully inspected in real time as they run. The machinist is recording in 1Factory.

The inspectors are simultaneously recording in that same 1Factory routine as they're able to work, in that same routine in different locations. So the in-process inspectors are going to be responsible for, maybe molded features, checking some radiuses and things like that. They're going to be running CMM samples, and all that's designed to keep the machinist at the machine, running and checking with the hard gauging that they've been issued.

Brent Donaldson: And all of that data and information is automatically uploaded into 1Factory like that?

Luke Warner: It is from both the Crysta-apex CMM and the Mitutoyo Mistar CMM automatically upload into 1Factory.

Brent Donaldson: That's awesome. When I first started learning about 1Factory, I met the CEO and founder of the company, and he, I just thought it was kind of an auto ballooning, platform, but it's so much more than that.

Luke Warner: It really is. Yes. So, kind of our workflow, once it goes through the planning team, the drawings get automatically bubbled. They get loaded. We create a, an inspection plan based on, risk assessment, for each feature. We have gauges loaded. So it comes to the floor, with frequencies, with, with the gauge selections, everything that the machinist needs to complete the inspection of their parts.

So we can see all in 1Factory, we get the, statistical process control, to see where we're actually running on that feature. We have control limits set. And then 1Factory is also capable of handling the sampling frequency, which is indicated to the machinist on the left, by the white and blue boxes. So they know what they're responsible for recording and what frequency of part number.

Brent Donaldson: Wow, yeah, 1Factory has really evolved. So when I did a feature on them right when they started, I have not seen any of these capabilities.

Luke Warner: What's nice about 1Factory is we do kind of have like a good, we have a good relationship with 1Factory and design influence on if we need something to do it a little different, their software developers can adapt, to that. So we've we've gone through some continuous improvement iterations with them, as well. So I don't doubt that it would look different than if you haven't seen it maybe a year ago.

Elisabeth Smith: I am, fascinated by, I guess the continually improving and, the lean manufacturing piece of that. Again, it's the combination of data and people and, and tangible results. I love seeing. Like, that's that's the thing that's so great about manufacturing that I think, genuinely, society craves because so much of our time is spent online in a digital world to see tangible results, and especially at smaller organizations where you can make a change and then see it, see the result of that within, you know, a couple days, a couple hours. That is cool.

Luke Warner: So this is a unique sell here that came remember, we talked a little bit about, capacity and throughput and solving problems for the customer. And also problems for the machinist. This involves all of those as the product is being developed here. Customer demand went from about 90 a week to 120. In order to hit 90 a week,

The machinists were working, like, 50 hours, 55 hours in some cases to make, you know, coming in on a Saturday trying to hit those numbers to satisfy the customer. So what we did was we created what's a collaborative where a human and a robot work together. So the human can run the lathe, which can over produce about 2 to 1.

The mill is a tall bar, so we automated the mill, obviously, but this will run after he goes home and before the night ship comes in. And after night shift goes home. And on the weekends, it just keeps running. Now we can hit about 130 parts a week, and they can work, 40 to 45 hours to be able to manage that.

Brent Donaldson: Wow. That's fantastic.

Luke Warner: So you can see we have a vertical and a horizontal holding configuration. There's two different there's two different pallet types. So two different operations that are running simultaneously. So we use DMUs probing software, which is Siemens based really powerful software where this pin is about 60,000 difference in height from that pin.

So it comes in and it's not just identifying, it's saying, okay, if it's this tall run that program. If it's that tall run that program. There's some logic built into it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, you know, Adam's team and production. We work together to say what - right from the very beginning, before we even build something. What could go wrong?

What do we anticipate going wrong? We've we've had failures of imagination in the past. And we will learn from those. So every time we do a new automation effort, we have more and more what we call poka-yoke mistake proofing happening.

Elisabeth Smith: When you're really deep in the supply chain in a machine shop, oftentimes you disconnect from it's here's a widget, here's the print, here's the GDNT. What is its actual function and where is it in the world? We make a guidebook of here are the parts that we make for for these platforms. And then when you go to the, you go to the Blackhawk and, you know, the, the crew chief there, the maintenance tech who's there and, they, they're excited to see the people that make this, and they're like, oh, you make this stuff that if that's bad, I have a bad day. Well, yeah. Well, we're making sure that you have a good day.

Luke Warner: So these machines by nature are automated. So these are gantry gantry loaded NZX Machines from DMG Mori. So then to add on top of that, Adam's team has then taken automation and and merged it with DMGs automation.

Adam Dunn: This linear track or the seventh axis is the largest they've ever built. And actually we've considered adding another 12 to 14ft on it to be able to accommodate unloading this fourth machine. And that's kind of in the works. If that capacity becomes a problem, that we’ll extend this down. It basically lets it know by a switch. Hey, this part just came out.

It knows what part it's grabbing out. And it's going to go through that same series of processes no matter what the part. It's going to go through a couple dip tanks, it's going to go through a blow off. And then either depending on its register right now it's going to go to the CMM or it's going to go place it in one of its finish stations.

Brent Donaldson: This is a brilliant setup! Is part of your job, looking for other opportunities throughout the plant to systematize automation?

Adam Dunn: Absolutely. Especially the seventh axis. Once we got our feet wet and our wheels going with the seventh axis, we see a lot of opportunities, but everything comes at a price. So it's finding the right opportunity. So we rely on new work coming in to help fund new projects.

And our sales strategy is starting to look at different jobs that are well suited that we could dedicate for some fun. And as we play with robots all day.

Brent Donaldson: To folks who might not have an understanding of what happens in in machine shops and not just machine shops, but really highly automated, facilities like this. Why should they care that that, not only that manufacturing exists here, but that we have incredible capabilities at places like Acutec, that are doing amazing things with extremely highly technical equipment. Why does that matter? Why should anyone care?

Elisabeth Smith: We have a machinist who who makes chainmail, like, for fun. You know, guys who are making knives, and forging with with home forges. So the accessibility of some of that equipment for hobbies, there's a lot of that. And, the craftsmanship! If you can connect people in that way to, Okay, well, now we just scale it or we do it with even, you know, million dollar computers. I tell kids like, these are million dollar computers that cut metal. It makes it a lot more accessible and fascinating and interesting. If we approach it less from a victim mentality and more from a opportunity, like, here's the opportunity and here's the, unleashing of American creativity and, resourcefulness. I think the the better off will be.

This episode of the Shop Tour series is brought to you by Manufacturing Connected. Manufacturing connected is a digital platform from modern machine shop’s publisher, Gardner Business Media, focused on the issues shaping manufacturing. Regardless of the processes you use or the markets that you serve. That includes everything from automation and additive manufacturing to capital investment and hiring. Go to mfgconnected.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
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