Investigating and improving Boeing aircraft composite panel industrial painting issues by designing smart robotic precision painting system

摘要

Abstract Aerospace Composites Malaysia (ACM) Sdn Bhd produces one of the aircraft components, which is an aircraft composite panel. Currently, the painting of the composite aircraft panel is manually conducted by the high skilled human operator. However, there are several issues of manual painting, which are the precision of the thickness specifications, uneven spray, dust-free, microbubble, colour appearance, and contour of the aircraft composite panel. Consequently, these issues contribute to the aircraft aerodynamic performances, productivity, and index time of the aircraft composite panel’s production. Thus, the main objectives are to investigate the human painting mimicking robot incorporated with the existing painting environment. The proposed environment becomes smart precision painting systems. In conclusion, the proposed prototype will overcome the quality issue of aircraft composite panel painting faced by Boeing worldwide aircraft industries. Furthermore, the proposed prototype will increase productivity and contribute to the maintaining of the aircraft’s aerodynamic performance.