Blue and white metrology under Bavaria’s skies

Aircraft Philipp makes structural components in Übersee, Bavaria for every conceivable type of passenger and military aircraft. One such plane is the Airbus A320, the world‘s best-selling medium-range airliner. So that these silver birds climb safely into white and blue skies all over the world, quality assurance at Aircraft Philipp is firmly grounded on a coordinate measurement system from Hexagon Metrology.

Aircraft Philipp has been active in this industry for over 45 years. Structural and engine components leave the assembly lines in three locations in Germany for dispatch to almost all renowned aircraft manufacturers. The Übersee factory produces a wide range of machined aluminium or the more costly titanium structural components with dimensions up to 2 metres for incorporation into airframes. Small batches but enormous diversity of parts are the order of the day for the Bavarii.

Even after decades in the business, Toni Liedl, Quality Manager at Aircraft Philipp, is still fascinated by the engineering that makes aircraft construction possible. “I am still filled with enthusiasm when everything fits together at the end, just as it should. Especially when you consider the multitude of parts, with regular shapes, straight lines, various angles etc., which go into each plane.“

True versatility: DEA GLOBAL and PC-DMIS
The company has made its mark in particular with its competence in numerical control (NC) programming. But it is not just milling and turning machines that are fed with CAD data from CATIA V5. The data is also essential for metrology. The metrology technicians use a DEA GLOBAL series coordinate measuring machine (CMM) with a measurement range of 1200 x 3000 x 1000 mm and PC-DMIS CAD++ CMM software. The software integrates CAD models simply and easily...