Reducing waste in satellite construction

Researchers from our Laboratory for Integrated Metrology Applications (LIMA) are working with the satellite construction industry to save time and money, by developing new generation tooling technologies with integrated metrology.

The tolerances for the satellite assembly jigs and fixtures are very tight, presenting a technical challenge. There is a growing necessity in the spacecraft industry to increase the flexibility of jigs and fixtures to accommodate an increasing number of satellite products and product variations, referred to as ‘reconfigurable tooling’.

Reconfigurable tooling is not inherently accurate or repeatable enough to service this requirement; so high accuracy large volume metrology and localised embedded metrology is being investigated to help achieve these tight tolerances.

This would aim to eliminate manual checks that are currently used to assess build conformance in fixtures today, reducing the time and cost of production. Also, the reconfigurability will allow fewer jigs and tools to satisfy assembly demands, hence reducing capital expenditure and compressing project lead times.