BUILDING ON A STRONG FOUNDATION

As the requirements of aerospace & defence sector are niche, they need niche solutions. The machines have to be built with special features and need to be robust to withstand the tough demands year on year, says Praful Shende, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer - Bharat Fritz Werner Ltd. (BFW)

- Niranjan Mudholkar

The aerospace & defence sector is an extremely difficult sector to work for the machine tools industry due to stringent technical specifications, difficult to machine materials and high precision components. Tell us about your experience of working with this sector.

Working for Aerospace and Defence parts/components is really a challenging task. The components for these sectors are generally machined out of exotic materials like Inconel, Titanium, Hardened Stainless Steels and Special Aerospace Grade Aluminium. These materials - with exception to aluminium - are very tough to machine due to their hardness, work hardening properties and safety of machining due to its low ignition temperature (Ti). Parts are generally of high precision with lot G&T requirements. Hence there is a need for high end and high accuracy machine tools with high torque to RPM ratios. These machine tools are expensive. Apart from machining challenges, parts/ components needed for these sectors have to be interchangeable and ready to replace which poses the challenges of repeatability.

As these components are machined in small batches spread over years, it is crucial that the machines exhibit great longevity and thermal stability to hold the close tolerances over the lifetime of the machine. This further emphasises the need for machining parts on 5-axis machines. Five-axis machines give specific advantages of least setup changes of parts ensuring repeatability and consistency. In addition to technical challenges related to machining and accuracies, the traceability demands of aerospace segment demands Industry 4.0 compliance for the machines.

What kind of challenges have you faced while serving this sector and how have you dealt with the same?