Creating a smart part and managing its life cycle

(upbeat music) - [Mark] There's an old aphorism that says an airplane is millions of parts flying together in close proximity. At ONE Aviation, the business depends on each of those parts living up to its individual mission. So the Technical Review Team spends lots of time discussing ways to make each part better, lighter, and more durable. Today, they're discussing the bell crank. - So it should be pretty quick to do the analysis. - Okay, wonderful. (upbeat music) - [Mark] Ah, the bell crank. It's one of the many, many parts needed to keep ONE Aviation's planes and its business flying. That makes it a great entry into the digital thread. But first, just what is a bell crank? - [Ryan] There is the bell crank up there. - [Mark] Yep, so I've got one here and I've got one here. - So what you'll see is there's a push rod that's attached to either end of this bell crank that's pivoting about. And what it's doing is driving a double action of the doors so that when the gears starts to move, the doors open, and as the gear clears the doors themselves, the doors will start to sweep closed again. - Huh, okay. - [Mark] Now that we know what a bell crank is, how do you design one? Or anything, for that matter? Well, let's start with how we used to do it. - So when I jumped in, we were in a transition phase between working in a more paper-based or on-the-board and moving into the digital era. - Okay, so literally, you guys are drawing this stuff. - Right, Mylar prints ink french curves. We're kind of at the tail end of slidables. Storing them in a drafting room with a check-in check-out system that was very manual. It wasn't configuration control in the way we think of today. So a lot has changed in the last 20 years. The visibility that you get, we refer to a drafting room earlier on. There may be only one copy of that print. Now in the digital age with PDMs, with a data manager that we have, we could have multiple people reviewing the same thing all at the same time. - So the system's got to control the PLM, this digital thread is going to have control over configuration management so that no one gets the wrong print. - Right. - So it's not just about getting a design out the door quicker. It's about evolving that design over time in a way that lets you constantly deliver an improving product to the market. - Yeah, we're all about customer experience, so we want to make sure that whatever we offer to the customer is of the best experience that we can possibly offer. (ominous music) - As you can hear, designing a part in the digital thread is not just about the software, or even the engineers. It's about the seamless flow of information; and the right information at that. What's even more interesting is that the digital thread is non-linear. Even though I'm here in the front of our little demo, I could easily be in the middle or even the very end of a design cycle. To learn more about how a part enters the digital thread, I met up with Barry Chapman in his hometown Chicago, Illinois. Barry is the Vice President of Aerospace and Defense for Federal and Marine Industries at Siemens PLM Software and he has a informed perspective on this topic. Barry I want to understand, you know, we talk about this notion of the digital thread, end-to-end, cradle to grave. How does a part actually get into the digital thread? Like how do we start? - The first way to start from just the beginning, is you design the part, right? You design the part in a CAD system, you're right. But now you can scan parts. So you could digitally scan a part that's existing. - I'm going to scan, I'm going to get the external dimension of this thing, I'm going to bring it in and I'm still going to be able to manipulate it in this digital world to either clean it up or get what I need out of it. - Right, and that's what's different now than in the past. In the past, you just take a picture and it's, you called it a dumb part. Well now, it's no longer dumb, now it's a smart part. You could actually take it, you could manipulate it, you could change dimensions on it, you could could change the curvature of the part. You could actually manipulate the part and create something new on it or modify the existing. That's what's unique now. - [Mark] So scanning is one way, but I also want to learn how to design a bell crank from scratch. In this case, the digital thread really shines. Here we can draw into data and design requirements for this and other products from across ONE Aviation's portfolio. - Okay, so on the left, we have our product data manager which is currently at our company's team center. Then on the right, we have NX, which is our design software. And what's on the screen specifically here is a digital twin or an electronic copy of what I'm holding in my hand. We're still in 3D space, but on this file, If I actually switch to drafting for this file, now I have-- - This is your drawing space. - This is our drawing space. Now 10 years ago, or in the past, what happens is this actually comes before this. Every file inside NX has a modeling space, which is three-dimensional environment. And then it has the flip side, which is a two-dimensional environment. So the design process actually happens entirely in the digital world, ad them we move to the point of cutting chips. - [Mark] Meaning fabricating the product. - Yes. When you set up a drawing, you're telling a story to somebody. And that story has to be in the context of the audience. So the audience here is going to be a whole bunch of different folks, all the way from the manufacturer, the supply chain that reach people who have to buy it, to the people who have to inspect it to make sure that it conforms. - Can you draw something simple for me? - So let me start with a blank page here. What you're going to see is as I draw this part, the real part is going to start really popping out to you. - I'm going to guess, those are holes that you just drew that are going to be in this ultimate part. - As a matter of fact, they're the corners of the part. So if you can imagine, what I'm drawing is this, the outside shape and this outside shape. So now what I have is a sketch that I've extruded in 3D space, so now I have a solid. - So now I've actually gone from two dimensions to three dimensions. - Absolutely. - Perfect. - I've taken a two-dimensional sketch and turned it into a three-dimensional object in 3D space. - How is it that I can use tools like this to think about achieving the goal of light-weighting this part? - That really is dependent on the level of analysis that you're willing to throw at it. - Okay. - Right now, we are looking toward where the topology optimization would be something that just becomes ingrained in our normal process. - Okay, so I think what I take away from that is we got to go learn something about typology optimization. - Absolutely. - [Mark] Coming up, we'll learn how typology optimization can help ONE Aviation create the next generation of lighter, better bell cranks. (soft music)