Lightweights aircraft parts throught the joining of two industries: CNC Machining and Additive Manufacturing.

Additive manufacturing is one of the principal trends that is flying as the future of the aerospace sector.

Companies as Airbus, Boeing and General Electric, have realized that 3D printing of metal coupled with topology optimization can reduce assembly costs and time in some kind of parts. These fewer, lighter parts will also simplify maintenance and save on fuel, allowing companies to be more competitive in the sector.

Topology optimization for additive manufacturing parts is becoming an effective tool for least-weight and performance design in aerospace sector. This is a mathematical method that optimizes material layout for a given set of loads, boundary conditions and constraints with the goal of maximizing the weight of the component.

The problem?

Due to this optimization, is very critical to guarantee the correct interface during the final operation of the element, and additive manufacturing process itself cannot achieve the required accuracy and tolerances.

The solution?

For this comes into play the CNC machining as a necessary post-process for 3D printed components which you can bring tolerance down to ±0.005 mm which can make a huge difference in the aeronautical field.

The milling of metal parts manufactured by additive technologies is a challenge in the sector due to the lightness and the complex geometry of the elements. Despite this, GSC has experience in machining interfaces of this type of parts having defined a machining strategy to optimize the parameters of the process (cutting speed, feedrate, depth of cut and spindle speed).