The widespread use of industrial robots in the aerospace field is primarily for machining and manufacturing, enabling them to perform tasks such as welding, painting, heat treatment, and assembly of aerospace products. Because the production and manufacturing of aerospace products are characterized by complex structures, large dimensions, high precision performance indicators, high environmental cleanliness, and heavy loads, higher requirements are placed on the structure, performance, motion processes, and reliability of industrial robots.
1. Spraying
Spray coating is a surface treatment technology that uses specialized equipment to melt a solid material and accelerate its spraying onto the surface of a workpiece to form a special thin film layer, thereby improving the workpiece's corrosion resistance, wear resistance, and high-temperature resistance. The coating quality of aircraft surfaces is crucial, primarily due to the challenges in controlling coating thickness, surface roughness, thickness tolerance, and porosity, which are difficult to achieve manually. However, robotic technology can effectively solve these problems. Robotic spray coating ensures consistent coating, allowing the entire workpiece to be coated using a single device, avoiding the inconsistencies of manual operation across multiple areas. Furthermore, it effectively eliminates the need for post-coating sanding and removes porosity from the coating, resulting in more uniform surface tolerances, reduced material waste, lower waste disposal costs, and protection of operators from spray dust contamination.
2. Welding
Welding is a machining method that uses heat or pressure, or both, and with or without filler material, to achieve an atomic bond between parts. A welding robot is an industrial robot used for welding; it is a multi-purpose, reprogrammable, automatically controlled manipulator with three or more programmable axes, used in industrial automation. In aerospace manufacturing, welding applications are increasingly common, used for spot welding, arc welding, laser welding, and friction stir welding of aluminum alloys and other aerospace materials. Industrial robot welding can significantly improve welding speed and quality while reducing welding costs and the difficulty of welding complex curved surfaces, thus automating the welding process. Robotic welding relies on offline programming and virtual simulation technology, which can optimize welding paths and improve efficiency.
3. Heat treatment
Heat treatment is a process that alters the surface or internal microstructure of metals and their alloys through heating, holding, and cooling to control their properties. Because aerospace materials require high performance, often exhibiting characteristics such as high temperature resistance, lightweight, and high strength, raw materials must undergo heat treatment to improve their properties. Industrial robots in heat treatment can automate the production process, ensuring the consistency and stability of heat-treated products. Their application in heat treatment has driven the development of industrial robots towards higher efficiency, lower cost, greater flexibility, and greater intelligence. Furthermore, industrial robots in heat treatment can effectively improve working conditions, product quality, and labor productivity.
4. Assembly
Assembly is the process of assembling manufactured components according to specified drawings and technical specifications, followed by debugging and inspection to transform them into a final product. Aerospace assembly includes two stages: sub-assembly and final assembly. Sub-assembly mainly involves the repair and fitting of cabin doors and hatches, the riveting of pallet nuts and brackets, drilling, etc., while final assembly mainly involves the installation of finished components and final assembly testing. The application of industrial robots can improve the assembly efficiency of aerospace equipment, shorten the production cycle, ensure the consistency of equipment quality, and lay the technical foundation for the construction of flexible intelligent production workshops for aerospace equipment, including multi-robot collaboration, robot hand-eye vision, and robot automatic navigation.
