At present, the ability of major manufacturers in the world to produce aircraft is approaching the limit. According to Boeing's statistics for the entire market, the world needs to produce 27,000 cargo aircraft and large passenger aircraft in the next 12 to 15 years. Airlines will not only purchase more new aircraft, but will also upgrade existing aircraft.
In this era of high oil prices, OEM manufacturers and partners in all aspects of their supply chain are under pressure from airlines. In order to keep flight fares and air freight prices as low as possible, they also require aircraft manufacturers to continuously review costs.
Manufacturing Challenges Sandvik Coromant is committed to developing products for specific processing applications in the aerospace industry, helping manufacturers meet the ever-increasing demand for order production with minimal investment.
Sandvik Coromant is a partner of the UK's Advanced Manufacturing Research Center (AMRC). The center is located in Sheffield and was built with a £45 million investment from a world-leading company and international research institute in all areas of aerospace manufacturing. Boeing and AMRC have reached a 10-year agreement to continuously invest in AMRC's R&D projects to provide value-added solutions for the manufacturing industry.
Sandvik Coromant validates the new machining concept with AMRC and provides the customer with proven cutting parameters to help them solve practical application problems. In the latest case of aircraft structural parts machining, all machining locations are grooves with different characteristics. Sandvik Coromant and AMRC have proposed 25 possible ways to machine such grooves, and then further identified the five most viable methods based on factors such as productivity and efficiency and tool life. These methods have been provided to Sandvik Coromant's Applied Research Center in Sweden. After a series of improvements, they will be incorporated into the company's "Titanium Milling Application Guide".
Sandvik Coromant has been in the Applied Research Center in Sweden for many years, but since the UK has become the world's largest aerospace industry base in addition to the United States (now with more than 120,000 employees with various skills), the company is located in the UK in Simi The Aerospace Applications Center (AAC), a specialized agency, was also established at the headquarters of the city of Harry Susie in Dess.
Through two different research projects in the center, Sandvik Coromant has developed application guides for the processing of superalloys such as Inconel 718 (HRSA Guide) and blade processing guidelines (Aviation Engine Application Guide), as well as many for composite processing applications. Research is ongoing. All of these application materials can be downloaded from the Sandvik Coromant website.
One of the most important factors affecting the processing of superalloys is the tool material. For example, the company now offers two Sialon ceramics for profiling and cavity machining of superalloys: CC6065 is highly tough and process predictable, and is a substitute for whiskers in the semi-finishing stage. The economic choice of ceramics; CC6060 has the characteristics of anti-groove wear, is the first choice for open profiling.
Sandvik Coromant's research platform is extensive, and its research results in a more consistent and stable process for its customers. This Sandvik Coromant is one of the factors that distinguishes it from other tool brands on the market. Sandvik's engineers are able to accurately calculate tool life based on depth of cut and feed in aerospace-specific machining applications. Knowing this information, you can accurately calculate production costs.
In actual machining, one of the considerations of cutting tool knowledge, the size and shape of the tool holder should also be fully concerned to avoid interference between the workpiece and the fixture. This consideration of aerospace processing is particularly important because the scrap of a part can cost as much as £60,000.
Accurate assessment, creating savings at the Sandvik Coromant Aerospace Applications Center helps engineers demonstrate to customers that they can achieve significant production time savings in actual part processing, whether it is for parts that the customer will process or that is already being processed. Components. Savings in production time can bring significant cost savings to the entire production process.
A comprehensive assessment of the process allows Sandvik Coromant and its customers to revisit the processing of existing parts or new parts, and they can find opportunities to save on production costs in any solution. The use of state-of-the-art technology, tool and toolholder systems with optimized path, feed and speed reduces machining time. In addition, proper programming can also play a key role. The optimization of the process can be divided into five phases:
1. The customer provides information such as drawings, equipment and workpiece materials.
2. Sandvik Coromant optimizes tooling options, selects application methods, and develops savings plans.
3. According to the customer's machine condition, Sandvik Coromant has developed a programming strategy.
4. Program simulation and verification.
5. Verify the results of the savings plan to the customer through actual processing.
AAC has recently achieved numerous success stories in the aerospace industry. For example, the previous production of a titanium alloy part required two passes, with a total processing time of 614 minutes. Now this processing takes only 199 minutes. This solution has been applied to 10 similar parts, resulting in annual production savings of up to £230,000.
In a similar case, the original production of an engine part required multiple processes, the entire processing time was 480 minutes, now only one process is required, and the processing time is shortened to 53 minutes. In another case, the processing time of a fuselage structural member was reduced from 1,030 minutes to 350 minutes, saving £70,000 per year.
All in all, optimized tools and solutions mean a higher return on investment.