Bingen, December 7th, 2021 - Fiber composites make aircraft lighter, but not machining. The tool provider C6 Composite Tooling and its coating partner Oerlikon Balzers show how tool life can be tripled and tool costs reduced when drilling complex components in composite components with a complete package consisting of tools and the CVD diamond coating BALDIA COMPOSITE DC for the aerospace customer FACC.
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are giving wings to aircraft construction. Pioneers such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner have long increased the proportion of fiber composites to 30 to 50 percent - and the trend is rising. The economic production of CFRP parts is an ongoing topic that drives leading aerospace suppliers such as the Austrian FACC AG today and tomorrow.
For example, the hundreds of thousands of holes used to assemble the components of a passenger aircraft open up potential for this. Drilling is done partly by hand with semi-automatic, precise drilling feed units, partly with CNC machines or drilling robots, which adapt flexibly to the hull or other parts and move automatically. The tools penetrate through material 11 to 25 millimeters thick and drill holes with tolerances of a few tens of micrometers. Highly abrasive machining places extreme demands on a tool. Unlike metal materials, CFRP composites are very inhomogeneous, there are a wide variety of fiber and layer structures that can be penetrated precisely and without breakouts.
C6 Composite Tooling from Buchen in Baden-Württemberg is a specialist for such high demands. The Odenwald region offers complete solutions for the processing of lightweight materials in the target markets of automotive, aviation and rail transport. For FACC, they developed an optimized machining process including tools for drilling holes in winglets. These wing tip extensions reduce drag and help reduce fuel, emissions and noise.
From 80 to 250 bores
A drilling process was to be improved with an expensive tool solution, which, however, only achieved a service life of 80 holes. The breakthrough came with the inclusion of the coating partner Oerlikon Balzers. In mutual exchange, different tool substrates and geometries, production and process parameters were tested and adapted to the BALDIA COMPOSITE DC diamond coating. The nanocrystalline CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) layer is used specifically for the processing of composite materials, shows a very high abrasive wear resistance and enables optimal process reliability and perfect bore quality.
It achieved excellent results in use: The final coated one-shot drill achieved a service life that was more than three times longer with 250 holes, and the tool costs fell by more than half. “The intensive, close partnership was essential for the development of the optimally assembled product with substrate, pre-treatment and coating. Without the coating, we would not have been able to achieve an economical drilling process,” Sebastian Herkert, Technical Sales Manager at C6, and Gerhard Hagedorn, Head of Customer Support Diamond at Oerlikon Balzers, unanimously assess the project. The mutual customer also confirms the success: “The tool and coating work in all applications, on semi-automatic drill feed units and on CNC machines. Of course, we are particularly pleased about the high level of efficiency of the drilling application and the reduced tool change and non-productive times. This supports our central goals,” says Andreas Mayer, Automation Technology Engineer at FACC.
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Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) make aircraft such as the Airbus A350 lighter, more stable and more environmentally friendly. / Photo: Airbus SAS 2010
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The tool supplier C6 Composite Tooling worked with coating partner Oerlikon Balzers for the aerospace supplier FACC to develop a target-oriented tool solution for machining lightweight fiber composite materials in aircraft construction. / Photo: Alamystock
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The total package of tool and CVD diamond coating BALDIA CO
