Article Features EMMA and Injury Reduction
In a blog post titled “Mechanized arm speeds sanding of large composites while reducing injuries” (link) Composites World Magazine discussed how EMMA prevents Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS), repetitive stress, and poor working posture injuries.
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Paint Booth Installation in Utah
Temple Allen has installed two EMMA units onto wall-mounted lifts in a new paint booth on a horizontal stabilizer production line in Salt Lake City. TAI engineering worked closely with the lift and booth manufacturers to integrate EMMA seamlessly into the production process. Working with a long-time customer whom we’ve helped implement EMMA into a number of existing production lines, this installation was our first where the building was designed with EMMA in mind, which allowed us to maximize the benefits EMMA offers to both operators and management.
This project is another example of TAI working with 3M to deliver a complete solution for a customer’s surface preparation processes. Like many of our installations for large OML composite parts, these EMMA units will be de-glossing bare composite, feathering fillers, and reactivating primer. Through industry experience and on-site abrasive testing, TAI and the customer chose to incorporate 3M’s 675L diamond abrasive for these processes.
EMMA, with compact integrated vacuum units offering dramatically improved dust recovery, allows this shop to take advantage of premium abrasives because keeping the sander flat utilizes the full disc and improves vacuum performance – which reduces loading and maximizes abrasive life to more than one full 235 ft2 (22 m2) stabilizer side per abrasive sheet.
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Expanding Into New Markets
EMMA has been hard at work for our aerospace clients for almost ten years, and we have begun to draw on all that aerospace experience to offer the same productivity, health & safety, and process improvement benefits to other industries that perform a lot of surface preparation, particularly wind power, rolling stock, and shipbuilding. We’ll feature more news about these in upcoming newsletters as conversations and contracts mature, but for now we wanted to tell you about two recent developments:
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Wind Turbine Blades
We recently installed two EMMA units at a blade manufacturing facility in Ontario, Canada. The units will be used to remove mold release agent, reactivate the surface, and feather the filler on blades about 50m long. These large glass fiber blades share many of the same process requirements as their carbon fiber counterparts in the aerospace industry, and EMMA’s ability to keep the sander flat on the curving surface, maintain a consistent pressure, and improve dust collection prove very attractive to clients in both industries.
Currently, these wind turbine blades need to be repositioned several times during surface preparation to accommodate the limited reach of human operators, which contibutes significantly to process time. EMMA’s greater range of motion allows few such repositionings, reducing process time and increasing facility productivity.
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Airbus, Broughton
Airbus installed two EMMA™ systems last summer to address ergonomic challenges within the A380 wing shop in Broughton, UK. This is the first shop within Airbus to deploy EMMA and we are looking forward enthusiastically to working with Airbus personnel to implement EMMA solutions within a number of their programs.
Conventional sanding tools have vibration levels between 3.5 and 5.0 m/s2. In the HSE “Exposure Point” system, an operator is limited to 100 points a day which corresponds with 2 to 4 hours of sanding. Because EMMA eliminates vibration exposure, operators in the wing shop are no longer restricted by HSE regulations and can keep sanding throughout their entire shift.
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Thinking of Farnborough
We’ve been offered a spot in the Maryland booth at the Farnborough International Airshow this coming July. We had a good experience at the Paris Air Show last year (pictured above). EMMA earned more than its share of attention, as she usually does, and we’ve since followed up with a number of demonstrations across Europe. Those of you who’ve attended Farnborough before – we’d like to hear your thoughts on whether it’s a good use of our promotional budget – Is EMMA the kind of technology
people are hoping to find at the show?
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EMMA™ - Not just for Aerospace anymore.
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EMMA alongside a Wind Blade
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Rolling Stock
The large number of train cars in use in Europe and the US generates a steady stream of repainting work every year. Drawing on our depaint experience with military, commercial and business aircraft, we sent two EMMAs off to Europe last fall to demonstrate how the systems are able to make dramatic improvements in the depaint process. Video of this work can be found on our videos page.
Within the MRO operation, the paintshop is the last in a long chain of processes before the aircraft or train is returned to service, and any process interruptions along the way serve to increase schedule and time pressure on the final painting. Additionally, and just like aircraft, train cars in the maintenance depot are not earning money, so the ability to move assets out of the depot faster and more predictably adds real value.
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