US 6,663,918 B2Granted

Sprayed-in thickness patterns

AssigneeGeneral Electric Company

InventorsTimothy Lance Manning, Timothy Ray Lattire, Michael Dwayne Rutter, Andrew Jay Skoog, Jane Ann Murphy

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Abstract

A differential thickness pattern can be induced in a coating that is sprayed on an aircraft engine part using a robotic system. The robotic system includes a spray mechanism with a triggering device to spray the coating on the aircraft engine part and a controller. The controller is used to move the spray mechanism along a predetermined path and to activate and deactivate the triggering device. To obtain the differential thickness pattern, a predetermined profile of the aircraft engine part corresponding to areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating is integrated into a control program used by the controller. The controller uses the control program to activate and deactivate the triggering mechanism to limit the spraying of the coating to only those areas of the part in the predetermined profile to obtain a different coating thickness.

Claims22

Dependent claims

A method for spraying a coating on an aircraft engine part, the method comprising the steps of:

providing an aircraft engine part to receive a coating, wherein the coating is a ceramic material;
providing a robotic system comprising a controller and an end effector, the end effector being configured to spray coating material on the aircraft engine part, and the controller having a motion plan and a control program to control operation of the end effector to spray a coat of coating material having a predetermined thickness onto the aircraft engine part;
determining a profile of predetermined areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a different thickness of coating;
modifying the control program by integrating the profile of the aircraft engine part into the control program to generate a modified control program, wherein the motion plan and modified control program control operation of the end effector to spray a coat of coating material having the predetermined thickness on only the predetermined areas of the aircraft engine part in the profile;
completing a pass of the end effector over the aircraft engine part using the motion plan and control program;
completing an additional pass of the end effector over the aircraft engine part using the motion plan and the modified control program;
and
repeating the steps of completing a pass of the end effector and completing an additional pass of the end effector until the desired coating has been sprayed on the aircraft engine part.

5 more elements

A method for inducing a differential thickness pattern into a coating on an aircraft engine part, the method comprising the steps of:

providing an aircraft engine part to receive a coating, wherein the coating is a ceramic material;
determining areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating;
correlating the areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating to points on a predetermined path traveled by a spray mechanism of an automated machine;
integrating the points on the predetermined path corresponding to the areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating into a control program for the spray mechanism in the automated machine, wherein the control program is used to move the spray mechanism along the predetermined path and to trigger spraying of the coating by the spray mechanism on the areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating;
spraying a coat of the coating having a predetermined thickness onto the aircraft engine part with the spray mechanism by activating the spray mechanism and moving the spray mechanism along the predetermined path;
spraying an additional coat of the coating onto preselected areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating using the control program to operate the spray mechanism;
and
repeating the steps of spraying a coat of the coating having a predetermined thickness onto the aircraft engine part and spraying an additional coat of the coating onto preselected areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating until the desired differential thickness pattern has been induced on the aircraft engine part.

5 more elements

A method for inducing a differential thickness pattern into a coating on an aircraft engine part, the method comprising the steps of:

providing an aircraft engine part to receive a ceramic coating;
determining areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating;
correlating the areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating to points on a predetermined path traveled by a spray mechanism of an automated machine;
integrating the points on the predetermined path corresponding to the areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating into a control program for the spray mechanism, wherein the control program is used to move the spray mechanism along the predetermined path and to trigger spraying of the coating by the spray mechanism;
spraying a coat of the coating having a predetermined thickness onto the aircraft engine part;
spraying an additional coat of the coating onto preselected areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating;
and
repeating the steps of spraying a coat of the coating having a predetermined thickness onto the aircraft engine part and spraying an additional coat of the coating onto preselected areas of the aircraft engine part requiring a thicker coating until the desired differential thickness pattern has been induced on the aircraft engine part.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.