FlexTrack Drilling System

Drilling accurate holes is important in all arenas of manufacturing and assembly. Current lean operations demand a new approach to cutting costs and staying flexible, while staying proficient at demanding jobs. Lightweight portable automated drilling machines are now finding themselves competing with large machine tools drilling complex structures.

It is feasible to eliminate the need for a large 5-axis drilling system by replacing with a portable 3-axis drilling machine. Often airframes and wings consist of large gentle curvatures that locally are considered flat. The FlexTrack was developed to achieve a goal of eliminating the need for the 5-axis capabilities of a traditional drilling machine, as well as eliminating the need for supporting tooling.

FlexTrack uses a flexible primary axis coupled to the airframe by multiple vacuum cups. This support eliminates the need for a secondary machine tool frame dedicated to supporting the Flex Track. The flexibility of this axis also allows for the discrete elimination of an axis of rotation by allowing the machine to follow the contour of the structure. Likewise a small span secondary axis reduces the need for another angular correction axis. Using the above as the base line and adding traditional CNC controls an automated lightweight portable 3-axis machine can perform as a 5-axis machine.

Simplifying drilling by treating large structures as locally flat and directly coupling a machine to the surface allows for small machines to compete. The result with FlexTrack is a production machine tool with unlimited applications.