Aerospace Machining Archives - Page 2 of 2

What is aerospace machining?

Aerospace machining is a subset of CNC machining. Specifically aerospace machining (as you can tell from the name) deals with parts manufactured for use on airplanes, satellites, the space station, or other aircraft. Aerospace machining is defined by its complexity, use of lightweight high strength materials, rigid requirements and specifications, and the strict precision necessary for the manufacture of the parts.

Components made by a cnc machine shop for use in the aerospace industry will typically be designed to be assembled with other components – whether machined or stocked parts. As such, it is vitally important for a machine shop focused on aerospace machining to be able to produce high precision machined parts every time.

Parts may be made from a variety of different materials. At CNC Industries, we have focused on aluminum which is a major component in many types of aircraft. Aluminum machining has it’s own areas of complexity and is very different from steel machining that may be more familiar to automobile manufacturers. Aluminum is a focused material in aerospace machining because it is lightweight yet still very strong. Titanium is also used for many space oriented components, but due to the cost and increased difficulty of machining, is not as prevalent in traditional aircraft.

April 19th, 2010|Tags: Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, Precision Machining|

Importance of proper quality control in precision machining

Poka-yoke, fail-safeing, mistake-proofing, any way that you call it, quality control is critical to running a precision machine shop. Quality control comes in many different flavors. All machine shops will have an inspection or metrology department to check for quality before any parts leave the facility. It is often less expensive and more efficient to create quality at the source.

At CNC Industries, we focus on creating advanced fixtures to prevent many of the common problems that might occur in the machining process. Our Pre-Flight meetings are an opportunity to talk through any and all issues that might affect a new custom machined part. This process is critical when running difficult aerospace precision machined parts or military parts. With the complexities of the aerospace components that we make, it is vital that all potential pitfalls in production are identified early in the process. It is at this time we are also determining the type and design of the fixture that we will use to prevent problems in production.

No matter how good the fixtures and the production router are, there is still a chance of problems occurring throughout the process. At CNC Industries, we have well trained personnel on all machines that are capable of running their own in-process inspections to detect any problems throughout the manufacturing process. All of our parts are assigned frequent in-process inspections to ensure that no problems creep in undetected.

With several of our aerospace customers performing no incoming inspection it is critical to have adequate inspection processes throughout our production. Our final inspection process is thorough and performed on best-in-class equipment to provide our customers with the utmost confidence that they are receiving quality parts with each delivery. At CNC Industries we take full accountability for all of our parts – from the initial purchase order to the final delivery of the machined parts to the customer.

April 16th, 2010|Tags: Aerospace Machining, engineering, inspection, job production|

Addressing Precision Aerospace Machining Difficulties

In the last post I talked about the difficulties of precision machining aerospace parts. I would like to address these issues and specifically talk about how CNC Industries handles each of them.

The first issue, namely tight tolerances, is addressed in a few different ways. The first step is to make sure that the equipment being used is capable of the types and quality of machining necessary. Proper maintenance is also an important step, many companies lay-off their maintenance staff at the first sign of a downturn. Maintenance is a key aspect of CNC Industries’ strategy. The second step of ensuring that tolerances are met happens in engineering. Engineering staff creates fixtures, work drawings, and machine code to run the part correctly. Engineering is another key area that CNC Industries believes should not be cut too early. The third step is to ensure that information about the part flows correctly. To aid in this we have written our own ERP system. Job Manager 2 is a real time system that enables information to be updated and transferred throughout the facility so that any changes made are implemented immediately.

The second issue, the amount of material removed, is a prime engineering problem. The fixture created for each part must take into account the changes in strength that the material will go through during the machining process. With fixturing being such an important aspect of creating a good custom machined part, we go through a process we call the Pre-Flight Meeting. In this meeting our top management, quality assurance, engineers, and shop floor supervisors meet to discuss any issues that we see as important to the manufacturing of the part.

The third issue, external quality standards, is again addressed through information management. Our ERP system allows each part to have an unlimited amount of quality standards. The part routers created in Job Manager 2 allow for any and all detailed information to be added to an individual operation. The amount of detail contained in each router, in addition to the real-time ERP system allows us to ensure that all of the information needed to complete a job to the full satisfaction of our customer is accessible at all times.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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April 5th, 2010|Tags: Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, job production, Precision Machining|

Difficulties with Precision Aerospace Machining

Machine Shops that work on a variety of different types of parts will know that custom machined parts for one industry may have drastically different issues than those machined parts for another industry. Aerospace components tend to have similarities in what makes them difficult. A few of the issues that face include: extremely tight tolerances, large numbers of machined features, large amount of material removed during machining, and multiple quality specifications.

Let’s look at the tight tolerances. Airplanes are assembled from a huge numbers individually manufactured parts. Each of these parts needs to be manufactured to a precise tolerance in order to facilitate assembly. By themselves tight tolerances are merely a norm in the precision machine shop world. it is when combined with the other factors that the tight tolerances cause difficulties.

The second difficulty of custom aerospace parts is the large number of machined features. An individual aerospace component may potentially have several hundred individual features. When you will have hundreds of dimensional checkpoints, even a single feature that is at the edge of tolerance can cascade and cause future dimensions to be further off. The only way to ensure that a part is going to be good is to hold the earliest tolerances even tighter than what the prints call for.

Implied in the second point is the amount of material removed. Removing a large amount of material causes it’s own difficulties and stresses on the machinery. Additionally the material itself will change dramatically as it loses the tensile strength of it’s original form while being machined. The programming and fixturing of the custom machined part needs to account for the changing strength of the material while simultaneously ensuring that tolerances are kept throughout.

Finally, in addition to the other issues, aerospace parts tend to have many external quality standards in terms of fit and finish. The cosmetics need to be pristine and the painting or plating needs to be done exceptionally well.

The 2 parts pictured below exemplify some of the complexities of custom machined aerospace parts.

Here are some additional custom machined parts that we have made.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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March 25th, 2010|Tags: Aerospace Machining, CNC machining, custom made parts, difficult parts|