Aerospace innovation takes root in farm country

A drive through the rural Midwest usually includes a handful of staples. Miles upon miles of corn and soybean fields. Sporadic herds of grazing cattle. The occasional one-street small town with a diner specializing in homemade pies. It’s a bit less common to stumble across a world-class aerospace manufacturing facility. Yet, that’s exactly what one can find well off the beaten path in Crawford County, Illinois, home to Flying S Inc.

Shaping the future, while embracing tradition

David Shaw grew up on a rural livestock farm that’s been in his family since the 1700s. His heritage encompassed more than agriculture, though, as his grandfather, great uncle, parents, and uncle were all pilots. David followed in their footsteps, moving away from the farm to become a pilot and aerospace engineer. Eventually, the strong call of his home led him to find a way to merge the various aspects of his family’s past into a solid path for the future.

“When we moved back to David’s family farm in 2001, we started out as a design consultancy, which quickly led to more and more different projects,” says Penny Shaw, wife to David and co-owner of Flying S. “Our home combined living space with a hangar barn, and in the late 2000s, we started using the hangar area to manufacture some of the parts we were designing.”

By 2012, the company had grown to include 15 employees and the Shaws built a new facility on family land. Six months later, orders had grown so rapidly that an expansion doubled the plant’s floor space. Today, five additional expansions later, the company performs engineering, composite fabrication, CNC machining, inspection, and assembly across 170,000ft2 of working space.

Invested in agility and quality

Flying S’s growth has been less the product of an initial grand vision than a constant commitment to identifying the next step to better serving its customers.

“Every time we take a step forward, we have a new vantage point that lets us see a little further,” Penny says. “When we bring a process in-house, we can closely monitor the quality, and it gives us a quicker response. We’ve become a one-stop shop for our customers and that makes us very nimble.”

The company has continually maintained a commitment to investing in advanced manufacturing technology, serving a who’s who of aerospace and space flight customers, specializing in high-mix, low-volume work and prototypes. Typical parts feature complex geometries and demanding tolerance requirements, and cover a range of materials including aluminum, carbon fiber, stainless steels, hardened stainless steels, and titanium alloys.

“The nature of what we do results in a lot of part diversity,” says Peter Bowman, manufacturing engineer at Flying S. “For our space parts, we’re usually running batches of between 6 and 15 parts, whereas our unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hardware might require quantities of 50 to 100. A small component for a drone system might have a cycle time of 15 minutes, and at the same time we’re producing space flight hardware that’ll run for 20, 50, or even 100 plus hours. Of those parts, more than 90% require 5-axis capability.”

A wide range of Haas, Matsuura, and Brother 5-axis machining centers fill the majority of Flying S’s metal cutting operations. Nearly all of them are served by pallet pools for a high level of automation. Throughout its history, the company has maintained a steadfast commitment to avoiding second and third shifts to allow employees more time with their families, so running lights-out is a key part of its strategy. The high level of automation also allows the company to be more flexible with employee schedules, giving operators several hours of latitude on when they start and end their workday. But combining automation with a diverse part mix has yielded its own set of challenges.

The unexpectedly vital role of workholding

As its capabilities evolved, Flying S acquired a variety of workholding products, including a range of soft jaws and standard vise systems. This variance created problems and frequently the workholding that best fit a specific job would require tradeoffs in needing to reduce cutting speeds, increase tool length, or use multiple setups to perform separate operations.

To enable better process optimization, Flying S moved to modular zero-point workholding. It initially invested significantly in products from LANG, before discovering HWR Workholding’s SOLIDPoint platform, which incorporates a wedge-type system allowing 96mm and 52mm patterns to be run on the same receiver plate. This added flexibility led to rapid adoption and integration of HWR products, including plates, risers, and SOLIDGrip vises.

“I was very, very happy to find that HWR products are 100% compatible with what we already had from LANG,” Peter says. “The pins, receivers, vises, and even the vise jaws were all 100% compatible with what we already had on the floor. It’s not often you see that level of compatibility between modular systems.”

Flying S quickly incorporated HWR SOLIDBolt and SOLIDPoint plates, along with SOLIDGrip vises in machines with maximum travels ranging from 200mm (7.9") to 850mm (33.5"). The modular nature of the system allowed the company to quickly and effectively create application-specific workholding assemblies maximizing spindle clearance and workpiece accessibility.

“When you pitch the table over at 90° to machine a 5-axis part, you have to dodge the vise to get to the part and it can create a lot of challenges,” Peter says. “The vise profiles, flexibility, and process reliability of the HWR system make it much, much easier to take full advantage of those technical capabilities. It’s amazing to me that we can use the same HWR products to kit-out our smaller, 140mm CNCs, all the way up to our larger, 1,000mm 5-axis machines.”

The company credits the precision of HWR products with streamlining its setup procedures. By incorporating HWR product models in Flying S’s CAM software, its programmers can quickly determine the optimal riser and vise configuration and then pass that information to the operators setting up the job. This also means each cycle is checked for collisions before an operator ever hits cycle start, an important element of unattended runtime and process reliability. SOLIDPoint’s repeatability is also high enough that the company typically no longer needs to indicate or probe parts prior to machining them.

SOLIDGrip’s reliably high gripping force has also proven to be beneficial. In the past, the amount of cutting force applied to a part while tilted at 90° could occasionally strip it out of its workholding. That has yet to happen a single time with any of the company’s SOLIDGrip vises, even when working with aluminum.

“You look at some of our setups and you’ve got a receiver, tower, and plate all stacked up and it’s $7,000 of workholding to produce this little part,” Peter says. “Some people question how that adds up, but we buy the best 5-axis machines to produce parts for our customers. We won’t hesitate to spend 5% or 10% of the cost of the machine on workholding that’s going to make sure we get the most out of it. With how quickly our team sets up and tears down jobs, the system has saved us tens of thousands of dollars.”

A bright future for a company and its community

In addition to making world-class aerospace parts, Flying S holds community activities designed to bring the next generation of innovators into the world of manufacturing. The company hosts school tours throughout the year and a Flying S Cadet program throughout the summer, where local children complete hands-on, manufacturing-based projects such as building model rockets and cars.

“Companies in general get a lot of bad press in today’s world, but they possess an amazing potential to do good,” Penny says. “As the biggest employer in our area, we put a lot of focus on being a great place to work and investing back into our community.”

Currently undergoing yet another facility expansion, Flying S is extremely optimistic in its outlook. While surges in the unmanned aircraft and space flight markets have driven much of the company’s growth, it’s confident these segments will see even more dramatic expansion during the coming decade. For the company, its employees, and the surrounding community, the sky’s the limit.

Flying S Inc.
https://www.flying-s.com

HWR Workholding USA Inc.
https://hwr-usa.com