Hanwha Aerospace USA has cut airfoil inspection on its rotating engine components from as much as 27 hours per part to about two and a half, using Renishaw's REVO 5-axis scanning system at its Newington, Connecticut plant. Jared Rossignol, Capital Planning Manager at Hanwha Aerospace USA, said the old inspection times meant the plant would have needed "close to ten CMMs" to meet customer delivery rates.
Hanwha makes integrally bladed rotors, blisks and disks for prime engine manufacturers. Its inspection relied on conventional CMM methods and legacy software, and platforms and blade tips went onto separate machines. Pratt & Whitney, an OEM customer, recommended the REVO system. Renishaw says the first deployment brought total inspection time from more than 10 hours to roughly six. After optimizing scan paths in Renishaw's MODUS software, total time fell below four hours, depending on part complexity, with surface finish included. Rossignol put airfoils plus platforms and tips at under five hours.
The REVO head is servo driven and moves independently of the CMM structure, so it holds scanning speed and probe orientation while following freeform surfaces such as aerofoils. Renishaw's product page lists scanning speeds up to 500 mm/sec, data collection up to 4,000 points per second and reach up to 800 mm from the center of head rotation. The company cites cycle time savings of 15–50 percent. Hanwha fitted RSP2, RSP3-3 and SFP2 surface finish probes, which puts form, profile and surface finish on one platform. For quality engineers, that matters because Hanwha said its earlier offline surface finish measurements lacked repeatability.
Hanwha also changed where inspection happens. It placed the REVO systems next to machining centers and trained machine operators to run inspection routines as part of the manufacturing cell. The systems report to Renishaw Central, a data platform that collects metrology and process data from CMMs, machine tools and gauging systems. "Program errors and response times dropped significantly," Rossignol said, adding that programmers are notified immediately when a machine stops. Brandon Golab, Product Manager at Renishaw, said the platform helps teams "identify potential issues faster" and reduce downtime.
Hanwha now runs five REVO systems at Newington, with more installed at its Cheshire, Connecticut site for other component families. Inspection capacity has scaled with production without added floor space or headcount, according to the case study. Calibration is a smaller factor in the gain. Renishaw says REVO-2 calibrates in 20 minutes, against about 30 minutes to two hours on traditional CMM systems, depending on how many head orientations a shop uses.
