Bell unveils new Manufacturing Technology Centre for Future Vertical Lift aircraft

Bell has unveiled its new 140,000 sq.ft. Man­u­fac­tur­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter (MTC), which it says will be an inno­v­a­tive prov­ing ground for the com­pa­ny to test and refine tech­nolo­gies and process­es for Future Ver­ti­cal Lift (FVL) air­craft, such as its Nexus eVTOL.

The facil­i­ty in Fort Worth, Texas, will pro­vide capa­bil­i­ties span­ning all of Bell’s core man­u­fac­tur­ing of rotor and dri­ve sys­tems, crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture and final assem­bly.

It will be pre­dom­i­nant­ly used to focus on pro­grammes for the US Army, with the V‑280 Val­or tiltro­tor and Bell 360 Invic­tus air­craft both being down select­ed for the Future Long-Range Assault Air­craft (FLRAA) and Future Attack Recon­nais­sance Air­craft (FARA) pro­grammes respec­tive­ly.

“We’ve proven what these air­craft can do. Now we’ve got to show that we know how to pro­duce them at a high rate with high qual­i­ty and make them reli­able and afford­able,” Bell CEO Mitch Sny­der said.

“The Man­u­fac­tur­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter is a facil­i­ty where we will devel­op the next-gen­er­a­tion man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies that will enable the V‑280, the Invic­tus and all things future at Bell.”

Bell says dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty and inte­gra­tion will form the back­bone of the MTC, which will be mon­i­tored and con­trolled by a net­work of IT, Inter­net of Things (IoT) and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems. This will man­age the inflow and out­flow of mate­ri­als, as well as the move­ment of activ­i­ty through­out the fac­to­ry.

By deploy­ing a net­worked soft­ware infra­struc­ture, the MTC will pro­duce a dig­i­tal twin of itself that gives every­one a com­mon oper­at­ing pic­ture of the build­ing, the equip­ment and the process­es.

Accord­ing to Glenn Isbell, Bell’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Rapid Pro­to­typ­ing and Man­u­fac­tur­ing Inno­va­tion and the leader of this project, the MTC is all about sim­pli­fy­ing tech­nol­o­gy while improv­ing it.

He said: “When­ev­er you sim­pli­fy, you get cheap­er, but you also get faster. And our suc­cess will be gen­er­at­ed from our abil­i­ty to reduce lead times and go faster. The costs will come with that.”

For exam­ple, engi­neers at the MTC will be eval­u­at­ing advanced tech­niques in man­u­fac­tur­ing gears to pre­cise spec­i­fi­ca­tions, ulti­mate­ly reduc­ing cycle times while main­tain­ing and improv­ing qual­i­ty.

Anoth­er key fea­ture that the MTC will demon­strate is its con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the sup­ply chain, which will allow man­u­fac­tur­ers to proac­tive­ly man­age sched­ule and costs. By receiv­ing real-time updates from its vast net­work of sup­pli­ers, Bell can auto­mat­i­cal­ly detect and solve issues. This will help Bell opti­mise man­u­fac­tur­ing and ulti­mate­ly reduce tim­ing and costs sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Sny­der added: “When our cus­tomers leave the MTC, and have seen what we’ve done in there, they should walk away very con­fi­dent that we know exact­ly how we’re going to build their prod­uct  –  and that we can build it at rate.”

Since estab­lish­ing a foot­print in North Texas in 1951, Bell’s facil­i­ties have been a hub for new tech­nol­o­gy in avi­a­tion. Many mile­stones, includ­ing first flight of the XV-15, V‑22, 609 and 407, took place in the Dallas/Fort Worth metro­plex.

Bell unveiled its Nexus air taxi vehi­cle at CES 2019, which is pow­ered by a hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem and fea­tures Bell’s sig­na­ture pow­ered lift con­cept, incor­po­rat­ing six tilt­ing duct­ed fans designed to safe­ly and effi­cient­ly rede­fine air trav­el.

And at this year’s show, the com­pa­ny show­cased the Nexus 4EX, which also fea­tures Bell’s sig­na­ture pow­ered-lift con­cept, but has four tilt­ing duct­ed fans which can be con­fig­ured as hybrid-elec­tric or all-elec­tric.