Dr Jason Hill
Chairman & Chief Engineer
Jason Hill, the owner and founder of Hill Helicopters, has a clear vision: He wants to see a 335000 m2 factory, with 500 people making 500 helicopters a year, with a range of scalable technologies that enable the team to make bigger, more sophisticated helicopters. And, ultimately, other types of aircraft as well.
Through the design and development of the HX50 helicopter, the team are well on their way to making the vision happen.
Many factors go into making HX50 the way it is, but importantly for Jason Hill it's about being clear on what you want the aircraft to be:
When designing an aircraft, you start with what you want the aircraft to be and what you want it to do. In our case, I wanted the ability to take five 90kg passengers with three hours of fuel at 140 knots.
Lead mechanical engineering Craig Jones reflects how, from the vision, the team starts to grow a design, laying out the bones, and always trying to push the limits of what you can do.
Hill Helicopters is building an organisation to manufacture approved aircraft with some of the tightest standards. That means everything from business processes, change control processes, bills of materials, and everything else that goes into controlling what happens at every level of the business is vitally important.
When Craig Jones started, the company was using a different CAD system. But with his experience, he knew the incumbent tool wouldn't be able to manage the large, complex models that he knew they would produce for this product.
He recommended moving to Creo, knowing it's excellent for large assemblies and a great surfacing tool. It's also great at helping them engineer the product, not just draw it up. PTC and Creo offer a robust, proven CAD system for the team, which is expandable and will grow with them.
Once they had more than two users, he recommended implementing Windchill to manage the CAD data. It's seamless, which is what is needed. Windchill and the PLM facilities allow them to lock down all of the necessary controls for data to go through all the required approvals.
And alongside this, the subscription model ensures it's cost-effective, rather than purchasing these tools outright.
Hill Helicopters has invested in some of the finest designers possible, with lots of automotive and supercar experience in the team, bringing richness to the design work.
They've fused the workflows of automotive design and conventional aeronautical design to end up with a product that works very well and is also very true to function.
The difficulties of finding people mean that when you find a good one, they might not necessarily have all the skills that you need. However, the Creo learn platform allows them to bring specialists in from all areas of engineering and upskill them very quickly on the tools.
Having access integrated inside Creo allows the design engineers to get closer to where the analysts need the design before spending the time and expense running big, sophisticated simulation models. And this, too, is an advantage, as it gives the design engineers the ability to design more confidently than previously possible.
The more simulation you do at all stages of the design means you need less testing, and you can get your product to market quicker. Simulation provides Hill Helicopters with higher confidence that they'll pass the tests they need to complete.
