Fabrication & Cutting

Honing an engine's cylinder bores enhances their geometry, surface finish and dimensional accuracy, improving their fit and alignment with pistons and thereby increasing the engine's life and power density while decreasing its vibration, friction and emissions.

Drag finishing—fixturing parts and dragging them through abrasive media—can prevent part-to-part contact, achieve tight edge tolerances, impart fine finishes and be used on parts with a number of characteristics: delicate, high value, complex geometries and multiple contours.

A small, Philadelphia-area shop is using a 55,000-psi, 2,000-mph abrasive waterjet to help grow its primary business: making parts for Boeing aircraft.

High-power laser machines—at least 5,000w—are more useful in machine shops because their power permits fast processing of thicker materials, materials more like the blocks machined by the metalcutting industry. Also, automation allows for more cost-effective laser machining.

Several types of cutting tools can be protected with coatings harder than regular A1TiN coatings by combining A1TiN grains with an amorphous silicon-nitride matrix.

To increase productivity, the aerospace industry should consider different tool materials for faster cutting speeds, tool coatings for reduced wear, and machine tools for quicker cycle times.

Pros and cons of waterjet cutting at the highest available pressure.

Machining more effectively with a new, more focused ultraviolet laser.

PVD titanium-diboride coating machines aluminum without built-up edge.

Waterjet technology helps custom fabricator offer additional products. Innovative waterjet cutting drives growth for stainless steel fabricator.

Chemically assisted finishing for better part performance and durability. Microsurfacing is an alternative finishing process with benefits that extend beyond parts with supersmooth surfaces.

The role of microabrasive blasting when finishing implantable medical parts.