If you are looking to quickly create ballooned drawings and first article inspection documents, you need the right tools for the job.

As should be apparent to anyone during the spring of 2020, life changes quickly. In fact, it seems that life is an endless series of adjustments and revisions. Change happens constantly in your business and it’s important to keep up. This may mean reacting to economic trends, but also to production changes.

Mike Terrell is the quality assurance manager at B&B Airparts Inc., a machine shop that specializes in manufacturing high precision parts for aerospace OEMs. B&B Airparts Inc. has been in business for over twenty years, offering machining, sheet metal fabrication, and assembly capabilities.

The aerospace industry wouldn’t function without first article inspection.

The English language is complex, often logical and illogical, and, as with many languages, can be further confounded by culture, dialect, and its passing from generation to generation. 

The perfect part. The Holy Grail of manufacturing today is to produce parts with absolutely no quality defects, zero scrap rate, and no time required for changeover to new product builds when required.

First article inspection (FAI) is a process to validate your manufacturing process can produce an item that meets the requirements as designed. In the aerospace and defense industries in the U.S. most companies are conducting AS9102 first article inspections.

Machining metal has its challenges, but machining glass is another matter—one that Dan Bukaty Jr., president of Precision Glass & Optics (PG&O) is well schooled in.

Effective quality management is crucial for the success of aerospace, an industry where failure is simply not an option.

With continuous advances in optical inspection technology yielding 3D scanners that are today capable of stunning speed and accuracy, a growing number of companies are including this technology in their first article inspection (FAI) procedures.