Inspection Data Drives Engineering Insights

Flying S was founded in 2001 on David and Penny Shaw’s family farm in Crawford County, Illinois. What started as an aerospace design consultancy has evolved to include engineering and part production, with a 47-machine tool shop and 15-person quality team. Images provided by Flying S. 

In advanced manufacturing, quality is about more than measuring parts to ensure they’re in spec — it’s a continuous loop between the engineers, machinists and quality inspectors. Designs flow from engineering to machining, and parts from machining to quality. In turn, data flows from the quality department back to both machining and engineering, helping engineers design better parts and aiding machinists in improving their production processes. But what’s the best way to get that data from quality to engineering and machining? These departments often use different software, and even if the software is the same, it doesn’t necessarily connect the different departments.

Flying S started as an aerospace design consultancy but has grown to include engineering and part production, along with a 15-person quality team — a necessity when making parts for the aerospace, defense and space industries. Verisurf’s software platform enables Flying S employees to speak the same language, whether they work in the quality lab, on the shop floor or in the design office, closing the loop of part and data flow.

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The Flying S inspection department was introduced to Verisurf when it purchased a Master3DGage portable CMM arm about 10 years ago. The team found Verisurf’s CMM programming software easier to use than its previous system, and when they learned Verisurf was compatible with their other equipment, they started implementing it on their other CMMs.

From Design to Manufacturing

Penny and David Shaw founded Flying S on their family farm in Crawford County, Illinois, in 2001. As the business evolved to include not just designing parts, but also making them, it established a machine shop on site. “While it was initially conceived to support composites work, it's grown to be more than that,” explains Adam Wesley, who does inspection support for company’s quality department. While the shop still machines molds for composite aerostructures, machined components with complex geometries and tight tolerances now make up a significant portion of its work. The machine shop has become a pillar of the business in its own right, with 47 machine tools including five-axis VMCs from Matsuura, Brother and Haas; five-axis machines with articulating heads from Kenichi; Haas three-axis VMCs; large routers from Thermwood and C.R. Onsrud; Nakamura lathes with pallets; and Prusa 3D printers.

A robust quality department with 15 employees and equipment including four CMMs, five portable scanning arms, laser scanning systems, and three Zeiss ScanBox systems has grown alongside Flying S’s machine shop. “I don't think Flying S could be Flying S without the quality department,” Wesley says. “Our customer requirements, some of them are pretty stringent.”

Not only does Verisurf work with a range of inspection equipment types and providers, it can also be used by other departments within Flying S. Data from the inspection reports helps machinists adjust processes to produce accurate parts, and engineering can use a part’s CAD file generated by Verisurf during inspection to design other components that connect to it.

Aerospace Inspection

Flying S has been using Verisurf at least 10 years, according to Wesley. The relationship started when Flying S purchased a Master3DGage portable CMM arm. The inspection team had a lot of success with the CMM arm and especially the Verisurf software that came with it. Jones says the department’s previous inspection software was based on the DMIS programming language, making training and support for it difficult to find. When the team switched to Verisurf and its Automate CMM programming software, he says the CMM became a much more valuable tool. When the team learned Verisurf was compatible with other equipment, it started implementing the software on its other CMMs. Flying S now has 17 seats of Verisurf, split between quality, engineering, prototyping and fixture design.

Verisurf’s ability to work with any type of inspection system and CAD file is a huge benefit for Flying S, whose variety of work necessitates a range of inspection methods. “You don't want to use the same type of inspection equipment for every single part that we make,” notes Adam Krupp, an aerospace engineer and previous inspection supervisor at Flying S. For instance, a portable CMM works for smaller quantities but not larger quantities, while parts with tighter tolerances on hole positions are best suited to a traditional CMM. Some parts even need multiple inspection methods. “If we need data that the CMM isn't quite capable of providing, then we'll just pull that program over to an arm and gather additional data into the same program,” Wesley says. “It works for hand measurement, too,” adds inspection supervisor Wes Jones. “If we need hand measurement data for troubleshooting something, Verisurf is where we go to pull the nominal data to find the information we need.”

Flying S also uses Verisurf for reverse engineering. When the owner’s 1930s Spartan Executive aircraft needed a new landing gear component, the inspection team scanned the part and created a CAD file. The engineering team used the file to improve the part, then the machine shop produced it.

Benefits Beyond Inspection

The benefits of Verisurf’s ability to compile data from multiple sources goes beyond the inspection department. “Being able to show the same interface for all those different types of inspections goes a long way to simplifying it for the machinist who's making the parts,” Krupp says. The machinists can then use this data to improve their production processes. “We make some really complex parts, so being able to machine a very complex part and have almost live feedback from the quality department where we can talk the same language and help the machinist make adjustments as needed,” he continues, “it just makes us better at making parts.”

The original landing gear part.

Wesley describes one recent job involving a large, complex machined part. “We machined both sides, pocketed, drilled, threaded — all kinds of crazy features. It’s a transmission housing for Jagemann Engineering in Arvada, Colorado. It was roughly a meter long, but it's also a relatively thin part for that size,” he says. When the first parts were inspected and compared to the CAD model in Verisurf, the inspection team found they were out of shape. But the data also showed how much the part had moved during machining. “The machine shop was actually able to change their machining strategy to eliminate that warpage in the finished product by a huge margin,” he says.

Verisurf also helped Flying S produce a complex composite part that was being laid up in a mold. As the part was being laid up, the engineering team needed to know how thick it was. “We were able to scan it and give them surface data that they were able to incorporate into revising the CAD models for that particular part,” Wesley says. He also says that within the past few weeks, he scanned a part using Verisurf, created a CAD file and sent it to the customer, who used that file to design other parts that would connect to the parts from Flying S “so they would be ready to incorporate it into their prototype when they receive the parts.”

The landing gear part scanned into Verisurf.

Reverse Engineering and More

Verisurf’s uses go beyond part validation. “It’s such a versatile tool because we can use it on so many different things,” Krupp says. For example, its ability to create and append CAD models makes it useful for reverse engineering. It played a key role in reverse engineering a part for a vintage aircraft, a 1930s Spartan Executive owned by Flying S’s owner. “There aren't that many of those aircraft made or flying,” Wesley explains, “And a landing gear component needed some serious help.” The owner brought the part to the inspection department, where Wesley scanned it and created a point cloud of the part. This included not only the shape of the part, but also data on mounting points and some primitive data on the planes. The engineering team used this data to design an improved part which the machine shop made. Then the new part went through inspection, where the team checked hole sizes and ensured it fit with the original hardware. “It's moved on to its final home,” on the vintage aircraft, Wesley says.

The newly machined landing gear part.

Flying S also frequently uses Verisurf to design fixtures that hold parts during CMM inspection. “We use the CAD tools inside of Verisurf and, by extension, inside of Mastercam,” Wesley explains. “They make it pretty easy to create a solid model for a fixture based off the CAD for the original part.” The team then produces the fixtures on its Prusa 3D printers. Wesley estimates the inspection department uses this process for 25 to 30% of the parts it inspects.

Solutions, Not Software

As a growing company, Flying S is taking on interns and onboarding new employees. Verisurf’s user-friendly interface and integration with Mastercam help streamline onboarding, as does its ability to work with all of Flying S’s inspection equipment, regardless of type or brand.

Verisurf provides a single platform for not only the inspection department but also engineering and machining to use. This streamlines onboarding and training. Verisurf also provides continued training and support, so Flying S can refine and expand its use of the software.

But training doesn’t stop after onboarding. Flying S brings in Verisurf for training regularly, not just to get new inspectors up to speed, but also to lead advanced training for experienced inspectors. For Flying S’s next training session, Verisurf is “sending one of their top guys here to do it,” Jones adds. “It means a lot to us.” Wesley says the team is hoping to increase its proficiency with 3D scanning. “Verisurf has the capability of scanning a part and then correlating it with the model and building out your data from the real part from that scan.” This will help Flying S expand its reverse engineering capabilities. “There’s a lot of old airplanes flying around. It'd be cool to be able to build parts for those,” Wesley says. “We've seen the need for that knowledge, and we're going to try to try to leverage that into how we use Reverse.”

Flying S’s relationship with Verisurf has even expanded from software to hardware, with the shop buying new inspection equipment through Verisurf. “If we buy it from Verisurf, their engineer will be here on site to help us set it up and make sure it's working correctly in their software,” Wesley explains. Krupp also notes that major inspection purchases typically require a new seat of Verisurf. “Having all of that stuff bundled together makes the process really easy,” he says.