Challenging Factors in Turning Tightly Toleranced Parts
This shop produces 100 housing covers made of high-tensile aluminum every year, and has reinvented and improved its machining processes in order to face the challenge of thin walls.
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The Supermini 105 machines a 1-mm internal groove.
The Munich-based company Herrmann CNC-Drehtechnik has machining expertise in aerospace components, having attained preferred supplier status with many large companies. Increasingly, however, there is demand for extremely small, complex, tightly toleranced, thin-walled precision components made of difficult-to-machine materials. In response, the company is having to cooperate with suppliers to reinvent and improve its machining processes.
One of these components with tight design and concentricity tolerances, required surface quality and thin walls for the design is a housing cover made of high-tensile aluminum. Herrmann CNC-Drehtechnik produces 100 every year, and faces many factors during the turning process, such as clamping thin walls. To tackle these factors, Horn’s Supermini and Mini tool systems along with a three-jaw chuck with custom-designed milled aluminum segments were chosen to be used in the shop’s Mori Seiki NL 1500 lathe. As the housing cover has a concave shape and 1-mm thick internal profile, the clamping pressure of the chuck has to be adjusted when clamping the large diameter section of the component to turn the part.
“Turning Thin-Walled Aerospace Parts” details the full machining process of the housing in a step-by-step breakdown. For more on this process, along with how Hermann machines various types of challenging materials, read the article here.
