Robots in gas turbine manufacture (including Esprit Project InterRob 6457)

Rolls-Royce is Europe\´s premier aero engine manufacturer and ranks among the top three aero engine suppliers in the world. Aerospace has been at the leading edge of engineering technology since its inception. The "exotic" materials used and the high number of operations necessary to manufacture jet engines differentiate it from general engineering. In this business the prime prerequisites are quality and reliability, terms that are synonymous with Rolls-Royce. However, compared with consumer durables, aero engine manufacture is a low volume, high variety, high value operation with a high rate of change. These characteristics tend to make automation expensive and difficult to justify. Nevertheless, a significant number of robot implementations have been made in Rolls-Royce over the last nineteen years. This paper looks at the various robot applications introduced so far at Rolls-Royce and outlines the Esprit Project InterRob 6457