Müller Weingarten in Esslingen, a subsidiary of the Schuler Group, has received its second service order from the aerospace group Airbus Deutschland GmbH. The order involves the retrofitting of a stretch drawing line at the company’s facility in Nordenham, near Bremen, where panel structures for all major Airbus programs are manufactured – including the new A380.

One of the key manufacturing processes at the Nordenham facility is the large panel line, where cylindrical and spherical aluminum sheets are produced. The production chain begins with the stretch drawing operation. For large panels with complex geometries, this manufacturing process is carried out on a stretch drawing line with a press force of 750 metric tons. The line has been in operation at Airbus in Nordenham since 1993 and is used to shape various outer panel parts – such as fuselage parts – for all Airbus models. These so-called pre-formed sheets, and other parts, are subsequently assembled to form fuselage elements in a downstream production process. The elements are then transported by truck or ship from Nordenham to the Airbus facility in Hamburg, where the fuselage is assembled.

“Following the successful modernization of a Müller Weingarten stretch drawing line in 2005, we wanted to gain Müller Weingarten again for this project,” explains Airbus Project Manager Mirko Wiedenhoeft.

Retrofit in just five weeks

The retrofitting process was completed in a record time of just five weeks. Müller Weingarten first overhauled the line’s complete electrical and hydraulic systems. The entire electrical installation was replaced by a new EtherCAT-equipped installation. The most important element in this connection was the renewal of the machine’s control system. The Allen Bradley control unit, which is no longer available, was replaced by a Beckhoff-PC control system in connection with a Pilz safety SPS. The excellent visualization system is particularly user-friendly. As the hydraulic system was prone to breakdowns, it was replaced by corresponding servo and proportional valves with a new axis positioning system.

The next step was to get the hardware up and running. Müller Weingarten developed a number of programming aids specially for this purpose. These included:

calculating the stretch force acting on the sheet metal with the aid of vector geometry
coupling spatially synchronized axes on calculated waypoints
calculating the stretching paths running tangential to the part

“Following intensive test runs, the line was assembled and put into production in mid August 2008. We were particularly pleased that we were able to fight off a bid by the line’s original manufacturer for the order,” explains Hermann Missal, the Müller Weingarten manager responsible for the project.

“By modernizing the line we have been able to significantly raise the machine’s process reliability. We were particularly impressed by how Müller Weingarten managed to meet our very tight deadlines and by the professional manner in which the whole project was processed,” say Jens Riemeier, Maintenance Manager at Airbus, and Airbus Project Manager Mirko Wiedenhoeft.

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Press release - 08/10/2008