Aerospace Supplier
Automates Shot Peening
Operation

Shot peening is a highly precise surface treatment process where turbine blades are bombarded with small spherical media to induce compressive residual stress — a critical step that directly affects blade fatigue life and certification compliance. At HPG LP's facility, this process had been performed manually for years, with operators loading and positioning each blade by hand into the shot peening cabinet.

The manual approach introduced variability between operators and shifts. Part positioning was not perfectly repeatable, leading to inconsistent coverage patterns across blade surfaces. As production volumes increased, the physical demand on operators grew, and the risk of handling errors on high-value aerospace components became a growing concern for quality assurance.

HPG LP needed a solution that could deliver repeatable, programmable part positioning throughout the shot peening cycle — without disrupting the existing cabinet infrastructure or requiring a full cell redesign.

Camex Robotics engineered a custom cobot integration specifically designed around HPG LP's existing shot peening cabinet. A collaborative robot arm was mounted at the cabinet entry point and programmed to handle blade loading, precise in-cabinet positioning, and unloading — replicating the exact orientation and motion path required for consistent peening coverage on each blade family.

The system was built with flexibility in mind. Each turbine blade variant received its own program, stored and recalled via a simple operator interface. Changeovers between blade families take under three minutes, with no tooling changes required. The cobot operates in close collaboration with the operator, who is responsible for quality inspection and program selection — not repetitive manual handling.

Camex handled the full mechanical integration, safety assessment, and program development in-house. The system was validated against HPG LP's aerospace process specifications before going live, ensuring full traceability from the first production run.

Since deployment, HPG LP has seen a measurable improvement in part handling consistency across all blade families processed through the automated cell. Operator feedback has been strongly positive — the physical strain of repetitive blade loading has been eliminated, and operators are now focused on higher-value inspection and oversight tasks.

Process traceability improved significantly, with each production run now logged against a specific cobot program revision — providing a clear audit trail for aerospace quality documentation. The consistency of blade positioning within the peening cabinet has reduced the occurrence of coverage re-runs, contributing to a leaner overall cycle time.

The project demonstrated how a well-engineered cobot integration can address a highly specialized aerospace process without requiring a ground-up cell redesign — preserving existing capital equipment while delivering the precision and repeatability that aerospace production demands.