After decades of using Cincinnati Milacron skin mills to manufacturer the airframes for Boeing 747 and 767 aircrafts, Triumph Aerospace noticed the performance of these legacy machines dwindling. Triumph considered replacing these “old iron” machines, but after receiving quotes of $2-3 million per mill, the company turned to Microtrol Engineering, a FANUC authorized CNC system integrator, to retrofit their existing equipment.
Microtrol’s solution retained the existing machine, while stripping out and replacing all of the electrical equipment, controls and components. The three Cincinnati Profiler machines are now equipped with FANUC 31i-MODEL B5 controls, which provide accurate, high-speed machining. The dual-head skin mill required up to 9-axis simultaneous machining, so a FANUC 30i-MODEL B was installed.
By retrofitting these machine tools with FANUC technology, Triumph Aerospace was able to cut their processing time in half and limit the damage to parts caused by power outages, reducing the amount of costly processed parts they were forced to scrap to zero since the retrofit and drastically improving their production overall.