Search Results

The Vibration Assisted Drilling (VAD) process has been implemented in Automated Drilling Equipment (ADE) on an industrial scale since 2011. Today more than 11000 ADEs are currently used on aircraft assembly lines. As well as drawing up a short report on the use of this new process, the authors make an assessment on new challenges that VAD has to face up. Indeed production rates are increasing and ADE manufacturers improve their technologies, one of the most recent and major development concerning the electrical motorization of the machines. These evolutions are as many opportunities for the VAD provided you have a clever understanding as well as an expert knowledge of the process. Thus the authors propose a new dynamic model of the whole VAD system which integrates the behavior of the part, cutting tool/material pair and the machine. The confrontation of model results and experimental validation tests demonstrates the relevance of the works.

Over the last few years, many aircraft production lines have seen their production rate increase. In some cases, to avoid bottlenecks in the assembly lines, the productivity of processes needs to be improved while keeping existing machine-tools. In this context, the case of drilling machine-tools tends to require particular attention, especially when multi-material parts are drilled. In such instances, the Vibration Assisted Drilling (VAD) process can be a way to improve productivity and reliability while keeping quality standards. This article presents a case of a drilling/countersinking process for stainless steel and titanium stack parts. Firstly, the article assesses the feasibility and benefits of using Vibration Assisted Drilling and Countersinking with the current cutting-tools. Secondly, it studies the consequences of introducing a new tool holder in the process, which combines the V.A.D. function, a new declutching function and the ability to control countersink depth.

As aircraft programs currently ramp up, productivity of assembly processes needs to be improved while keeping quality, reliability and manufacturing cost requirements. Efficiency of the drilling process still remains an issue particularly in the case of CFRP/metal stacks: hot and long metallic chips are difficult to remove and often damage the surface of CFRP holes. Low frequency axial vibration drilling has been proposed to solve this issue. This innovative drilling process allows breaking up the metallic chips in such a way that jamming is avoided. This paper presents a case of CFRP/Ti6Al4V drilling on a CNC machine where productivity must be increased. A comparison is made between the current regular process and the MITIS drilling process. First the analysis and comparison method is presented. The current process is analyzed and its limits are highlighted. Then the vibration process is implemented and its performances are studied.

In today's aircraft assembly process several new features make drilling operations very challenging according to production requirements. Parts are made of thin or thick multi-material stacks with a large scope to cover and complex assembly sequences. In addition, the current ramp-up in aircraft programs involves to improve productivity while keeping process quality and reliability. In this context robotic solution meets perfectly all these requirements as it is flexible, reconfigurable, fast and agile. Among the possible end-effectors, the Barrel Multi-Function End Effector (BMFEE) appears to be the most flexible solution to allow many different process configurations. The latest developments have been focused on the drilling equipment of this BMFEE. In fact the drilling process efficiency can be constantly improved especially in terms of reliability, quality and productivity. Therefore vibration-assisted drilling system has been integrated into the BMFEE drilling module.

Aircraft design has mainly changed in the past years, introducing new materials such as CFRP at a large scale. Even if this great change brought many advantages: weight, sustainability, reliability… it upset the way to produce basic parts and to assembly. A special difficulty lies in drilling multiple stacks made of different materials, i.e. metal (aluminum, titanium, stainless steel) + CFPR. Indeed, as the process has to drill through those stacks during a unique operation, cutting conditions and tool technologies are a compromise. As a consequence, tool life cycle, productivity and above all, hole quality are no longer optimum. Some materials, such as titanium requires low cutting speed and high feed rate whereas CFRP requires opposite trends. Moreover, heat generated by cutting metal (especially titanium) can damage CFRP when overheated metallic chips pass through.