Cyril Bath's expertise in designing, building and supplying systems that provide precise real time control of simulations, forces, motions and processes are well known to our customers in the aerospace industry used in our established technlogies of:

• Stretch Forming
• Elastoforming
• Hot Forming
• Superplastic Forming

Cyril Bath's acquisition of proven LFW technology from the MTS Corporation in 2008 was a strategic decision with the purpose of developing an enhanced evolution of this valuable process.  In the late 1990's, MTS introduced LFW machines to the market, which have been successfully used by Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney, and GE for development and production of welded blisks or IBR.

Since the late 1970's, Cyril Bath and our corporate partner ACB, have applied our computer control knowledge to the real-time control and monitoring of LFW processes.  Today, Cyril Bath software engineers develop software for applications and processes, specifically in the following four areas:

• Real-Time Control
• Simulation
• Computer Aided Design
• Data Analysis

Cyril Bath technology has been using computer control systems with multichannel control, servo-loop enhancement techniques and adaptive control techniques.  Please find the details of our LFW control system technology development:

MULTI CHANNEL CONTROL:

Cyril Bath's development work for LFW systems include multiple channels of synchronized closed-loop
control.

SERVO-LOOP Enhancement techniques

These techniques are used to enhance the performance of servo-loops.  In particular, inner/outer closed loop control is used to enhance the control performance of multi-stage servo valves.  Multi-stage servo valves are necessary on the LFW system due to the 4 high flow requirements of
the oscillation device.  The LFW system will require multi-stage valves due to the large oscillating mass consisting of the blade, blade tooling and a portion of the system.  Without servo-loop enhancement techniques, it would be impossible to control the amplitude and frequencies required for successful welding to the required degree of fidelity.

Adaptive control techniques

Even with the above techniques, closing the loop still does not guarantee that you will see the desired result.  We have developed additional adaptive control techniques to help the servo-loop achieve the desired results.  Some techniques utilized on our LFW systems include amplitude phase control and adaptive harmonic cancellation.  Cyril Bath and ACB have broken new technological barriers by establishing and verifying improved systems on our lab machines.  These machines are now available for customer use.