USAF Manufacturing Technology Highlights. Summer 2000
Abstract
Northrop Grumman Corporation, of Baltimore, MD, has developed an improved manufacturing process for F-22 aircraft radar components. The new process could result in a cost avoidance of nearly $87 million on the planned production run for the aircraft. The process replaces thousands of costly and labor intensive flex circuit interconnects on the radar's subarray components with improved automated ribbon bonds. This reduces the amount of hands-on labor and rework required and increases the number of acceptable arrays per production run. The F-22's APG-77 electronically scanned array antenna is composed of several thousand transmit/receive modules, circulators, radiators and manifolds assembled into subarrays and then integrated into a complete array. The baseline design used thousands of hand-soldered flex circuit interconnects to make the numerous radio frequency, digital, and direct current connections between the components and manifolds that make up the subarray. By replacing the hand-soldered flex circuit interconnects with automated ribbon bond interconnects, the first pass yield of the subarray assembly has been vastly improved. Touch labor and rework have been simultaneously reduced. The ribbon bonding process completely eliminates eight different part numbers associated with the flex circuits and can be readily reprogrammed in response to changes in subarray design.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA385424
Entities
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory