How better surface finishing yields big gains for aerospace

Jonathan Dean, Managing Director, Fintek, explained: “Reducing component cost is rarely the main aim of aerospace manufacturers. There is a constant drive to improve surface finish. Every incremental advance helps the manufacturer deliver a better part with greater performance and that contributes to the aviation industry’s need for larger, stronger and lighter components that reduce overall aircraft weight, noise and fuel use while lengthening servicing intervals.”

Fintek are certified to AS9100 and can advise on super fine surface finishing for most complex engineered aerospace components. They provide a complete sub-contract service from free trial processing to full scaled-up mass finishing. One-off components are also catered for. Sometimes more than one surface finish can be achieved in a single process - for example deburring and edge radiusing, fine grinding and polishing or other combinations.

A good example of this is what happened when one leading second tier aerospace component manufacturer hit a serious month end bottle neck. A hand-deburring process for connectors, with notoriously difficult external threads, was causing the backlog. Despite a dedicated team whose sole task was to hand deburr, product completion was being delayed.

The manufacturer sent two parts to Fintek for a test. First Fintek designed and made the tooling necessary to hold the parts and then used one of their Otec pulse head centrifugal deburring machines. After a little time experimenting with various media and cycle times, the company was able to precisely deburr each part in five minutes per part to the required standard of finish.

Not only was this process a vast reduction in the time spent in costly hand deburring, it achieved additional surface finishing in the same process that was repeatable with a consistency impossible to produce by hand. A bonus benefit from the automated process was a degree of edge radiusing that improved the strength of otherwise brittle and easy to damage edges.

Convinced that this was the way to go, the aerospace manufacturer rushed the backlog of components to Fintek who cleared it in just three days. Fintek continue to process up to 300 components a month for the company.

A team of Fintek experts will be on stand 4/H40 at Farnborough on trade show days 11th to 15th July, ready to discuss and advise on surface finishing improvements for manufactured aerospace parts and cutting tools. Don't want to wait until July? The team are also at Subcon, 7th to 9th June, NEC Birmingham, Stand A54.