Aerobloggen

It’s been a few weeks since we started our first rotations at our home departments and we’d like to think that we know what we’re doing by now. Well, at least we’ve learned a ton of abbreviations which you’ll soon get a taste of! I was thinking I’d write a bit about what I work with at the Global Technology Center (GTC), namely additive manufacturing or AM for short.

Additive manufacturing is a collection of manufacturing techniques that are based on building a geometry through layer-by-layer deposition of material. The most well-known example are desktop 3D printers that depose molten plastic through a movable nozzle. Nowadays they can be bought for a few hundred bucks at Amazon. At GKN we work with metal AM (MAM), which require machines that cost a few hundred thousand or millions of dollars instead.

AM generates a lot of hype in general and specifically so in the aerospace industry. In comparison to for example the automotive industry we produce low volumes of products, which means the low deposition rate of AM processes is not as much of a problem. AM gives larger freedom in design than conventional manufacturing methods, for example by allowing internal voids in areas where material is not needed. This means that we can create a mathematically optimized design to minimize the weight of a component in relation to its performance. Lower weight means less fuel consumption and environmental impact – High five, Thunberg! Another advantage is in products that would otherwise require joining of multiple components. One example here is the rotor of our concept rocket engine Prometheus, which by use of AM has reduced the number of components from over 100 to just two (!!!).

At my department we primarily work with LMD-W, which stands for Laser Metal Wire Deposition. In LMD-W molten metal is deposited on the substrate (the “base”) by laser heating of a metal wire, held by a robotic arm. The primary focus is to build features such as flanges on large structures, for example a product called Fan Case Mount Ring. Currently, the material is bought as a titanium forging weighing roughly 550 kg and is then machined to a final weight of about 80 kg. Instead, we may start with a forging of 80 kg, add 25 kg of flanges and other features by LMD-W and then machine to a final weight of 75 kg or so. We have then reduced the amount of material wasted by 94 %, which once again is an enormous environmental improvement!

Given what AM is capable of it’s hard not to hype the technology – what could possibly be sexier than lasers, robots and reduced environmental impact?

Hi everyone!

My first post on this blog and my first blogpost ever actually. Didn´t think my blog career would start in connection to my first job, but really fun to be able to share what we actually are doing as trainees!

This week has also been filled with action. Firstly, “training days” is an event occurring right now at the Trollhättan site. The event is over two weeks where you have the opportunity to attend in-house courses/lectures presented by co-workers, which is a perfect opportunity to learn more about areas you find interesting!

One example of a fascinating lectures was “Clean Sky”, which is a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European aeronautics industry. The overarching goal with Clean Sky is through this partnership, developing innovative, cutting-edge technology aimed at reducing CO₂, gas emissions and noise levels produced by aircraft, which in a longer perspective also will contribute to the sustainable development goals. GKN is a part of several projects within Clean Sky and an example is the aviation engine in the image below, it is a prototype (demonstrator) developed by the company Safran in an attempt to come up with new ways to reduce fuel consumption further.

In addition to interesting lectures, we also had trainees from Saab visiting here in Trollhättan. It was a great deal of fun to have the opportunity to present our company (also interesting to test how much we have actually learned), network and hear about their trainee arrangement.

That was all from me this time, have a nice weekend and we´ll be in touch soon again!

/Rasmus Tyft

Hello, blog,

The recent weeks have been quite eventful for us trainees. But compared to the other weeks this week is different because now we are going to start with our rotations in our home departments (Hurray!!). The last week started with us spending Monday and Tuesday in Bohusgården where we had a course in group dynamics and leadership. But that’s not all, Monday ended with the traditional trainee dip in 5-degree Celsius water with clouds as far as the eye can reach, so now we’re trainees!! The evening, on the other hand, was a bit nicer with a three-course dinner and a lot of fun. Now that the Bohusgården courses are over, it’s time for us to start the rotations.

As we say in the Aerospace business “time flies” and now we have all started our 10-week rotations in our home departments. This is a small description of what projects and departments each trainee will be on for the next 10 weeks.

• Elamin Hamid Elamin: I will spend my weeks at Nozzle with data collection from old ARIANE 5 launches.
• Elin Eriksson will spend his weeks at Propulsion engineering with a loop analysis of the control system in the RM12 engine.
• Emily Chen will spend her weeks at ROTORS Engineering with a project in the field of software for the design of space turbines.
• Hampus Olsson will spend his weeks at GTC engineering methods working with benchmarking of how aerospace companies work with simulation of additive manufacturing.
• Rasmus Tyft will spend his weeks at Engines Digital with implementing AI to forecast inventory levels.

During these weeks, we will not only be working with our individual projects but also with our trainee project. We are still waiting for our major trainee project, an update on what it is will be posted in the near future. The weeks ahead will be very exciting and educational for us all. During the week, the trainee group will participate in various training sessions during the Training Days.

Now we will look forward to the fun in the coming time.

Thank you for reading, See you again soon!

Hi everyone!

Last week us trainees were on an adventure together. It was our first activity “week” (only three days this time) that we will have continuously in between our four department rotations that lies in our future. These activity weeks are intended for us as newcomers in the industry to broaden our knowledge and to form connections with other companies/GKN sites.

This time we chose to first of all visit GKN Aerospace in Kongsberg, Norway. This site is also producing engine parts to both commercial and military airplanes, just as we are in Trollhättan and that is why it is exceptionally interesting for us. The site in Kongsberg has around 500 employees and was established in 1987 to acquire the assets of the former jet engine division at Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk. It was really exciting and interesting to hear about the different programs they are involved in and to have a guided tour around their factory. We had a lot of discussions about what is to come in the future and the visions for the site in Kongsberg together with the former trainee Peter Hjortsberg, who began his career in Trollhättan but is now president of the site in Norway. A big thank you to Peter for allowing us to visit and for taking the time to meet us!

The day after Kongsberg we went back to Sweden and to Gothenburg. We took the opportunity to go to Volvo Cars to learn more about their production, as they are focused more towards mass production than GKN Aerospace. We can easily say that everyone got very inspired and motivated to implement some of the aspects at GKN.

The last day of our activity “week” we spent at Aeroseum and SKF. Aeroseum was a fantastic museum to visit to gain a deeper knowledge of the history of our Swedish military aircraft. A part of GKN in Trollhättan are working on military engines, so to be able to see and read more about the history gives us a new perspective that we will bring back to work.

We finished the entire trip with visiting SKF where we got an inspiring tour by Lars Werner. We got an interesting introduction to the company and an insight of how they work through innovation and digitalisation to gain high productivity. After this visit we went home with our heads full of ideas and motivation, just as after Volvo.

 

Hello everybody!

Finally it is time for the first real post by this year’s trainees! “The ancient ones” are soon leaving Sweden for their work abroad rotations and it is time for new blood in the trainee cabin here in Trollhättan.

The reason for the delay (we did start working here about a month ago) is mostly the two week “onboarding” program together with all new trainees at GKN Aerospace worldwide. In total, 27 trainees from the US, Netherlands, England and Sweden were here, pretty awesome! We spent the first week in Gothenburg doing various workshops and lectures in for example group dynamics, workplace culture, ethics and Lean manufacturing (a popular strategy to improve efficiency in a production system). And of course we had massive amounts of Swedish fika! In the evenings we explored Gothenburg and played a lot of volleyball and Super Smash Bros.

The second week was spent in Trollhättan and at our site here. We had tours on the shop floor, a lecture about the Swedish military jet engines that have been built on the site and tried the VR-experience VEGA, which was developed by the previous year’s trainees. The program ended by a fine dinner where we had the honor of meeting several SOMETHINGS, including CTO Russ Dun, who held a truly inspiring speech about the future of GKN Aerospace and sustainable development in the aerospace sector.

Now that the onboarding is over we are back on track with workshop practice, with the goal of getting to know the value streams of a few of the products we manufacture here in Trollhättan.

Hi!

We have since a few weeks back been working on our new rotations, this time I am working in a workshop called Rotatives where rotating components for jet engines are manufactured. Working within Aerospace you normally face really tough tolerances as it is very important to manufacture correct and safe products. When manufacturing rotating parts, it is even tougher. During my time at the department I’ve realized how incredibly cool it is to be able to manufacture something with such extreme precision.

This Tuesday (30^th of April) we had a “Two thirds review” of a project we are having, it’s a Viritual Reality (VR) project where you can explore GKN Aerospace in a very modern way, we will tell you more about this when the project is finished. However, our supplier has been working with this project for a time now, reaching an approximate 66 % completion. We had previously decided that a review of the project would be needed as we reached this level so our supplier come to our site in order for us to give some feedback.

Further, they also brought some additional equipment to show how VR can be used in training and manufacturing. They also brought a Microsoft Hololens which is a Mixed Reality (MR) headset, also known as Augmented Reality (AR). We took the opportunity to invite some managers and people over within manufacturing and IT to try it out and to let them be inspired. We are convinced that this type of technology can be exploited to make our company even better in the future.