The boom in giant aircraft, particularly, is driving a radical transformation in the materials of choice: suddenly, titanium, nickel-based alloys, ultra-high-strength steels and carbon-fibre composites have to be machined on a large scale and at high levels of productivity.
Metav 2014 will showcase prospects for new cooling strategies Conventional cooling lubricant concepts often come up against their physical limits here. The potential of cryogenic cooling compared to conventional processes has been rigorously examined by Hendrik Abrahams, a scientist on the staff of the Institute of Machining Technology (ISF) at Dortmund Technical University.
Cryogenic cooling: a genuine trend Hendrik Abrahams says: “The aircraft industry has a significant demand for more efficient processes and, from a researcher’s viewpoint, we’ve identified the salient advantages of cryogenic technology as an option for upgrading productivity levels”. The interest is there: as evidenced by Premium Aerotec GmbH, one of the sector’s leading component suppliers, which has already purchased machines featuring cryogenic cooling and is trialling the technology concerned.
Cryogenic cooling will pay off The cost-efficiency of cryogenic cooling depends on the CO2 consumption. “To reduce the costs for carbon dioxide consumption, we’ve already conducted studies on how to downsize consumption, where we’ve proved that with a significantly reduced CO2 mass flow – to be precise from 2.7 to 0.6 kilograms per minute – machining can be performed with equally good results. When the CO2 consumption is optimised and reduced still further, together with significant gains in productivity, it can be assumed that cryogenic cooling will pay off” concludes Abrahams.
You can read a whole interview (in English only) here.
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Institute of Machining Technology ISF Dortmund Technical University Hendrik Abrahams Baroper Str. 301 44227 Dortmund GERMANY Tel. +49-231-755-46411 [email protected] www.isf.de
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