Specialized Tools and Their Benefits on the Aerospace Industry
As you already know, aerospace engineering is a part of mechanical engineering and is used in the space and aircraft industry. Engineers use it to build various aircraft and spacecraft. Through the continuous advancement of technology, humans have established their steps in outer space. But we aren’t here to talk about space and how humans reach it. Instead, we are going to talk about something entirely different.
We are going to talk about metal cutting tools like carbide and pcd cutting tools and their influence on the aerospace industry. If you are an aspiring aeronautical engineer or a part of the aerospace industry, then you’ll be glad to read this blog.
This is a specialized field, so it requires innovative and smart tools to help produce excellently designed aircraft.
The aerospace industry deals with everything related to aircraft, from design to construction and from maintaining the aircraft to all the elements inside it. This isn’t as easy as it sounds because the designs require specific parameters like thermal management, weight distributions and restrictions, extreme resistance to conditions, etc. To ensure that every spacecraft can handle all the challenges and end up being victorious –the engineers use all types of tools specialized for aerospace projects.
Now, let’s talk about the importance of these tools in aerospace engineering.
Importance of Tools in Aerospace Engineering
Tools like thread milling, carbide cutting tools, or valve cutters are essential in this industry for many reasons, the primary one being the top-quality spacecraft production. If you want accuracy and precision while crafting and repairing such majestic machinery, these tools will ensure reliability and top-notch performance.
These tools are also used to ensure that material waste, production delay, and rework costs don’t happen. They can also work on various materials like aluminum, titanium, carbon fibre, metal, etc.
Now, let’s talk about three types of important tools used in the aerospace industry.
Diamond or PCD Cutting Tools
These tools are super popular in the aerospace industry because of their durability and performance. They are durable because they are installed with diamond; diamond being the hardest natural material of the earth have properties like: unmatched hardness, low friction, and high conductivity of thermal energy.
This means that diamond tools are ideal for working with hard and tough materials to achieve precise results.
Benefits of Diamond Tools:
- Better tool life: diamonds are wear and tear resistant naturally, which means that any tool which has a diamond in it will have a longer life with consistent performance even after years of use (it might need some maintenance, but it will be as good as new for a long time)
- Less heat generation: diamonds help to dissipate heat while the tool works; this way, the tool isn’t damaged, and the performance is mind-blowing.
- Better surface finish: since diamonds produce low friction, they produce better finishes on the surface.
- Good cutting speed: these tools are perfect for high-speed machinery, which reduces the time for production and provides efficiency.
Carbide Cutting Tools
Since as long as we can remember, carbide tools have been used in aerospace industry. This is so because of these tools’ wear and tear resistance, thermal resistance and sharp cutting edge.
Usually, these tools have metal carbides like tungsten, which comes with a binder element like nickel or cobalt to provide resistance and strength. They can be used in extensive cuttings and the designing of spacecraft.
Benefits of Carbide Tools:
- Good wear resistance: The hardness of carbide ensures that the tools last long and maintain resistance to wear and tear.
- Versatile: these tools can work their magic on several materials like titanium, aluminum, non-mantellic materials and steel. They are ideal in the aerospace industry because an aircraft has many different components.
- Affordable: these tools are more reliable and have a low replacement cost, which improves their quality and performance.
Thread Milling
This tool can protect the cutting edges from the high heat generated by rotating tools to cut nickel or steel-based alloys. This way, they can resist the heat to keep the integrity of the material intact.
They can also cut through or blind holes by different tolerances in the material. They can produce thread within the bottom of the hole.
Benefits of Thread Milling:
- Threading under challenging conditions: these tools can thread on any material like hardened steel, metal, titanium, etc.
- Good thread quality: the cutting conditions are ideal when thread milling is used. This way, you will receive a better quality finish, good angles and tolerance.
- No more harm on machine spindles: these tools give your machine spindle a longer life because the rotation on the spindle doesn’t need to be stopped or reversed with the milling of each thread.
Conclusion:
When it comes to using tools in the aerospace industry, only top-quality and precision-focused tools are allowed. This is because this industry can’t afford to make mistakes with its aircraft or research work. That is why always choose reliable, affordable and highly durable tools –like the ones we discussed.
