Design & Development of Low Cost Automation System for Loading & Unloading of Steam Turbine Blades

The major concern in machining steam turbine blades lies in loading and unloading of the component, which is been currently done manually. Since this loading and unloading operation considerably incurs some cost affecting areas like manufacturing lead time, decrease in productivity and loading and unloading time directly or indirectly, there is a need to implement an automated method of actuating these sequences significantly. Low cost automation principle is best approach to perform loading and unloading of work piece to machine that permits enhancing the performance of existing facilities by incorporating simple mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic or electrical systems and devices with low investments. The present Project work is concerns with design and development of low cost Automation System For Loading & Unloading of Steam Turbine Blades on Vertical Milling Machine, which will remove the human interference in repetitive working environment and increases the productivity by reducing the manufacturing lead time.