Eclectic Machine Shop

How the JPL R&D Prototype Machine Shop Equips for Tomorrow’s Unknown.

Story and photos by C. H. Bush, editor

What if your only customers were scientists and en-gineers dreaming about things most people don’t know exist and building things most people have never heard of? Things like the Galileo to Jupiter project or Project Genesis, collecting samples of charged particles in the solar wind? Or the Herschel Space Observatory? Or the  Mars Rovers or the Mars Science Laboratory or ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) robotic vehicle or hundreds of other projects designed to push man’s knowledge to the outer limits? What if your shop’s job was to fabricate the highly precise and sometimes incredibly complex parts and components dreamed up by the scientists creating those projects? How on earth would you staff and equip your shop to respond to whatever they request you to do?

“It’s definitely a challenge,” says Richard Cournoyer, group supervisor of JPL’s Pasadena, CA Prototype and R&D Machining Services shop. “Over the years, we’ve learned that the best approach is to hire and keep the best machinists in the world and equip the shop with an eclectic list of machines that can do anything they throw at us. We seldom build more than one or two of anything, but we want to offer the scientists the ability to make anything they can design and create. That takes a broad variety of equipment and ma-chinists standing by, ready to go.”

The JPL shop, among other things, sports a Makino V99L high speed vertical machining center, 2 wire EDMs, 2 sinkers, eight 3-axis mills (4 with 5-axis capability), a huge boring mill with a 2.5 cubic meter work envelope, a dual-pal-let horizontal mill, 2 Bostomatics with 10,000-rpm primary spindles and 30,000 and 40,000-rpm sister spindles.

“We use those for ultra-precision machining,” Cournoyer says. “But that’s only the beginning. We also have an Ultra-sonic 20, which gives us the ability to machine non-metals. Right now we’re machining a piece of Zerodur, a glass ce-ramic, which has virtually zero thermal expansion. Scientists love the stuff. It can be polished to high precision, coated easily, has low helium permeability, but it is dif-ficult to machine. And then we have an unusual little mill with a 120,000-rpm spindle. That one was originally built for intraocular lenses, but we rebuilt it for ultrafine machining. For turn-ing, we have a Monarch Spinner Slantbed lathe with live tooling, a couple of Bridgeport EZ-Path lathes, and a two very old engine lathes  that we rebuilt, and converted to CNC with Fanuc controls.” 

New Makino V99L VMC

Cournoyer’s latest acquisition was the Makino V99Lvertical machining center.“We have a 5-axis boring mill,” he says, “but because it’s 10-years old, it limits us to a precision of about .004” over a 2.5 meter cube, which is not good enough. We were seeing a lot of work in the one-and-a-half meter range going outside, so we started looking at large-format, 3-axis, high precision milling machines. Ulti-mately we came down to the Makino V99L, which gave us what we needed. The Makino has a 30-tool carousel, a table size of 2-1/2 meters and a precision of 1-1/2 microns. We fell in love with that. We’ve learned since we bought it that the company ads for the machine are true. It’s an extremely rug-ged (57,304 lbs.) and accurate machine that fits perfectly in our arsenal of equipment. When the Mars Science Lab proj-ect was going, we ran two shifts, and ran the Makino heavily on the night shift,” he says. A Different Time PerspectiveCournoyer says that the entire JPL operation and the prototype shop has a time perspective unlike anything in the business world.

 “The Mars Science Lab is a good example,” he explains. “The MSL project was moved out 26 months. Why? Because we lost our window of opportunity. The planets don’t wait. If you miss a window, you have to wait till Mars comes around again. MSL will resume in October of this year, so right now, we’re using the Makino for filler work, but when the project heats up again, we’ll run two shifts.”

Cournoyer points to the work force for further explanation of JPL’s long-term time perspective.

“I believe the average age at JPL is in the low 50s,” he says. “A flagship mission is a very large mission that usually goes to a distance planet. For example, our next one is going to Uropa, which is a moon around Jupiter. It will launch in 2020. And it will get there in 2026.That’s a long time from now. So, if you think about being in your mid 50s now, 2026 will probably see you into retirement. As a result, JPL is very big on a program called ECH. Early Career Hires, essentially for the scientists. They hire people to stick with a program throughout their careers. We try to do something similar in our section, too.”

Cournoyer likes to joke that he looks for machinists on the third half of their careers.

“Mathematically that doesn’t work out,” he says, “But it makes a good point. They’ve probably spent 15 to 20 years somewhere else developing and honing their skills and de-termining whether or not they have the knack for machining. Tool and die makers work out well, we find. I see a lot of resumes of what we call gray beards, which is great, because they fit the experience requirement. Our problem is that we can’t find any experienced machinists in their 20s or 30s, mainly because the schools and colleges aren’t teaching ma-chining skills, which is a shame.”

Apprenticeship Program

Realizing they needed to do something about the shortage of machinists, JPL reopened a long-closed apprenticeship program called STEP.

“The Step Program was going well about 20 years ago,” Cournoyer says. “Back then you could see machinists on the floor who were an initial part of that step program. Now we’ve brought it back. At present we have two apprentices and openings for 3 more.”

Requirements for apprentices are strict.

“We look for 3 things,” he says. “First, we look at education. They have to be in school working on at least an associates degree or a certification for machine shop. Next, we look for them to have a strong desire to become machinists.  Thirdly, we look for a personality that will fit in well in an academic environment. We’re not a production shop. Our scientists and engineers are sometimes finicky folks, and we have to make sure they understand that. If they fit in, they can work here up to 30 hours a week while they are attend-ing school.”

Personalized Software

Cournoyer wants his machinists to be productive from the day they walk in the door. As a result, he doesn’t want them wasting valuable time learning different CAD/CAM packages.

“We have four CAD/CAM software packages here,” he says. “We have Unigraphics, Esprit, GibbsCAM and MasterCAM. I know that’s unusual for an environment to have four, but if we hire machinists who are expert in a particular software, it’s my job as a manager to give them tools to do their job. That way they can hit the floor running.”

Where to Next?

When it comes to the future, Cournoyer is somewhat philosophical.

“In terms of equipment, we’re planning to buy two more Makinos this year,” he says, “two V56s. Our budgets come from Congress, so sometimes we sweat out the economy and the elections. If we get a new President, we wonder what his direction for science will be. But in our case, we just got our new budget, which is several billion dollars bigger than last year, so I guess we’ll be okay for a the near term. Also, there is some economic stimulus at the NASA level, which is good. We need basic research and space exploration, if we want to stay ahead in the technology race. Most of the truly exciting developments in science nowadays come from NASA and JPL, so I don’t think any President or congress would want to lose that edge. We’re always looking to the next exciting challenge coming over the horizon. It’s what makes this work so great.”

Overall view of the JPL Prototype and R&D machine shop facility in Pasadena, CA

Richard Cournoyer, right,  group supervisor  of JPL’s Pasadena, CA Prototype and R&D Machining Services shop discusses a project for the Makino V99L (background) with deputy  supervisor Oscar Avalos.

Terry Bennet, right, one of several teachers,  in a teaching session with Aura Sarkisian, a student at  Glendale Community College and part of the  STEP apprenticeship program at JPL

Machinist Cliff Lengtat sets up the Makino V99L The mahine has X-, Y-, and Z- axes of 78.7 x 39.4 x 31.5 inches, with rapid traverse and cutting feed rates of 787 ipm. A large worktable of 90.5 x 39.4 inches accepts a maximum workpiece of 90.5 x 39.4 x 25.6 inches weighing up to 8,800 pounds.