Germany-based Kuka Systems Aerospace (www.kuka-systems.com) has received the American Helicopter Society’s International Supplier Excellence Award for its new assembly concept, which will be used to build Bell Helicopter’s 525 Relentless. The award is given each year to a supplier that has made a notable contribution to the ‘vertical flight’ industry.

Working in collaboration with Bell’s engineering staff, the Kuka engineering team has developed a palletised process based on industrial assembly line principles. The main aircraft is built up in a major fixture that moves along the assembly stations.

Ancillary tooling is added or removed from that fixture to allow different work tasks to be performed at each station. The traditional assembly method would be to build up each component in a dedicated fixture, and when a specific task is completed, remove that component and put it into another fixture to build it further.

The result is a progressive build-up of each major section of the aircraft, but with many uncontrolled variations and tolerance issues in each one. The final mating of components and sections usually requires significant ad hoc adjustments to force out-of-contour or misaligned components into place (this is typical throughout the aerospace industry).

Palletised assembly offers many advantages over this traditional process, most notably an improvement in overall quality. The results tend to be more precise, with less variability. Moreover, making the components — and ultimately entire sections — is simplified, resulting in a smoother faster flow with more-efficient use of manpower.

Kuka is manufacturing all tooling for the forward, mid and aft fuselages plus all the tooling for the tail boom, engines and transmission, and the ‘joining’ of all major structures on the 525 Relentless. Bell is offering the vehicle for a wide range of non-military missions that require a super/medium to light/heavy class of helicopter.