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GE runs the XA102 on one digital model its suppliers have to be able to read
GE Aerospace says the Air Force NGAP contender is its first engine defined by a machine-readable model from design through assembly, and it is now working with suppliers so they can use that same model for machining and inspection.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- GE Aerospace says it is working with suppliers to procure hardware and test individual components before it assembles the first XA102 test asset for the Air Force's Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program.
- The company says the XA102 is its first engine to use model-based definition, in which a machine-readable model replaces two-dimensional drawings, from design all the way through assembly.
- Test data from the XA100 under the Air Force's Adaptive Engine Transition Program, including lessons on thermal management and fuel efficiency, is being applied to the new engine.
- Adaptive cycle engines change how they operate with the mission and flight conditions, and GE says the technology offers greater range and substantially more thermal-management capability than today's combat engines.
- Pratt & Whitney's XA103 is being developed under the same NGAP program, so the Air Force has two competing adaptive engines in front of it.
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Why it matters
- constraint GE can hold the model internally, but a supplier whose programming or measuring equipment cannot consume it will derive a drawing from it, putting back the translation step and leaving two documents to revise.
- exposure When one dataset drives both machining and inspection, a wrong attribute in the model reaches both, and there is no separately drafted print to disagree with it.
- capability Small production runs are where dropping the drawing package pays most, because per-part engineering effort is spread over few units.
- precedent A first-of-type inside GE sets the expectation that suppliers on the next propulsion program will have to show model-based manufacturing and inspection capability before they quote.
A machinist at an XA102 supplier opens the data package for a part and finds no print. Tolerances and datums sit inside the geometry as attributes, and getting at them means opening the file in software that can display and use them. GE Aerospace says it is working with suppliers to make sure they can use the same model-based data for manufacturing and inspection [5].
Model-based definition puts the product definition in the machine-readable model, which can then be passed directly into downstream manufacturing and inspection [3]. GE demonstrated those processes during the first phase of the program [6]. The company's stated aim is to connect engineering, manufacturing and inspection through the same model, cutting errors and the time needed to get from design to hardware [7].
The designers were already working in a model. The change lands on the person writing the tool path and the person writing the inspection program, who now take both from that file [3].
GE has not given an error rate or a design-to-hardware time for the approach, or a date for assembling the first test asset [14]. Hardware procurement and component testing still come before assembly and eventual testing, so the announcement does not put the XA102 into operational service [12]. Air Force budget documents describe NGAP as an effort to develop adaptive engine technologies that meet requirements for the next generation of combat aircraft [11].
For anyone running the same change on a smaller product, two questions sort the rollout. First, whether the last consumer of the definition can read the model natively, without a person re-drawing it. Second, whether the quality plan names the model, and not a drawing, as the authority document. Two yeses and one definition travels the whole chain. A single no and two documents have to be kept in sync at every revision.
What to watch
- Whether GE names a date for assembling the first XA102 test asset or reports results from component testing.
- Whether Pratt & Whitney describes a comparable model-based process for the competing XA103.
- Whether GE publishes any measured comparison of design-to-hardware time against the XA100 program.