Inspection Fixture

This was the culminating project in my Tool Design 2 course in my third year of AMET at Confederation College. The project was to create an inspection fixture for several aircraft components from one of the local aerospace outfitters in town so that they could inspect parts they received from shipments faster. There were three parts that were divided amongst the class, and I tackled the Drain Adapter Valve component. Currently, the part took almost 10 minutes to inspect, and a total of 13 parts had to be inspected out of every batch, leading to a total inspection time of 130 minutes or 2 hours 10 minutes. My goal was to greatly reduce that time to inspect the parts while also making a tool that was affordable.

I first created 3d printed prototypes to test different ideas and tried to fit as many of the features of the part onto the tool. Once I was satisfied with how the prototype was working, I began programming the part in MasterCAM to be machined out of aluminum on a CNC mill. To finish the part, I inscribed a tool number onto it and created an inspection sheet which could be used to verify the accuracy of the tool before use. I would have measured the final tool using a Coordinate Measurement Machine (CMM) to verify accuracy of the tool; however, I ran out of time. Finally, I created a presentation which presented the costs and benefits of the tool and how it compared to not using the tool. With the tool, the upfront cost was slightly higher, however it got the inspection time per part down to a minute, nine times faster than just by hand. As a result, the tool was found to be more cost-effective after 40 batches of parts.