Project Number: A2983

Project Title: Orbital Welding for Aluminum Tubes

Period of Performance: APR23 – SEP25

The F-35 Production Tube Shop welds a wide variety of aluminum alloy tubes that are safety critical to the performance of the aircraft. These aluminum tubes have “Class A” type welds, the failure of which would endanger personnel and systems. They also have a high scrap rate due to weld inspection failures due to porosity, cracking, burn-through, etc. Currently mechanics manually gas tungsten arc weld (GTAW) aluminum tubes using rotating fixtures while they manually feed filler metal into the arc. There is high variability between individual mechanics depending on their skill level. To reduce high scrap rates, an automated orbital welding process could reduce variation seen in production between mechanics and increase first time weld quality.

A repeatable and accurate solution to make “Class A” type welds is needed to reduce high scrap rates for aluminum tube welding production. To efficiently support Production, an automated (or mechanized) orbital solution is required to increase first pass yield and eliminate process waste, LM Aero seeks to identify and develop an orbital welding solution to replace manual “Class A” welding of aluminum tubes in F-35 production.

This project is expected to result in a 5-year ROI of 1.02.

The Orbital Welding for Aluminum Tubes is expected to be implemented at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics facility during the Q2 of FY26.