Aircraft industry: tools attract increasing attention
According to a statement by the organizers of the world’s largest aviation fair at the end of June, this year’s Paris Air Show would be “A Show to mark the economic recovery!” This claim was more than met: record exhibitor and visitor numbers documented the general growth trend. At the same time, however, the industry is undergoing a major transformation. As a recent survey of top managers by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants ascertained, new companies from Asia and customers’ falling budgets are intensifying competition and increasing price pressures in the aviation industry.
Tools are profiting from this development since longer operating times and higher cutting speeds also enable them to directly impact the efficiency of entire production systems in the aircraft industry. In other words, the better the tools are adapted to the respective machining process, the higher the productivity. Two examples from the USA – still the world’s largest and most important market for the aircraft industry – confirm this. LMT Onsrud tools are generating enormous performance increases.
- Record exhibitor and visitor numbers: Paris Air Show at the end of June. (Photo: Paris Air Show)
More than 2,100 exhibitors put in an appearance at the world’s most important air show in Paris. At the previous show, in 2009, there had been less than 2,000 exhibitors. This trend was also repeated when it came to visitor numbers: for the first time, the show attracted more than 200,000 private visitors and some 140,000 industry visitors. However, the number of exhibitors also indirectly points to a major challenge within the industry: new companies are coming to the fore – above all, in Asia – and increasing competition and, ultimately, raising the pressure on prices. In China, according to the foreign trade experts at Germany Trade and Invest (GTI), this is also a major political goal. That is why the Chinese government intends to invest some 24 billion euros in the development of a passenger aircraft called C919 by the year 2016 – with global ambitions, as GTI explains: “The strategists aim to establish themselves as ‘C’ in the sequence ‘ABC’ (Airbus, Boeing, C919).”
USA still the number one market
Nevertheless, the USA remains the world’s most important aircraft market. The reasons for that include the high defence budget, at least that is the appraisal of the top managers in the industry surveyed by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. According to the survey, 73% of them primarily rely on the American market. The fact that production planners in the United States are also seeking increasingly efficient production processes is made clear by application examples for LMT tools. That is because tools that offer longer operating times and higher cutting speeds can also have a very significant impact on the efficiency of overall production processes in the aircraft industry. This is demonstrated by two exemplary applications of LMT Onsrud tools:
• Capo Industries, a Californian aerospace component manufacturer, deploys an EMC Series tool made by LMT Onsrud. The titanium finisher is used to machine an exhaust assembly made of stainless steel. When it comes to feed rate and cutting speed, this standard tool offers similar performance to the previously used specialized tool made by an LMT competitor – with one crucial advantage, however, as John Hansen of LMT Onsrud explains: “Using a standard tool significantly reduces tool costs and therefore also overall production costs.”
• Another American aerospace manufacturer has benefited from a massive performance increase since it began using an LMT Onsrud aluminium cutter in the production of a helicopter component. It deploys the 63-630 solid carbide tool to finish a formed aluminium component that provides the necessary stability in the interior of the helicopter fuselage. After the forming process, a series of deburring operations were required to provide the required finish.
Compared with the previously used cutting tool, the 63-630 does not only offer a fivefold increase in operating time, but also improves the feed rate from 40 to 160 inches per metre( Minute). “In addition, machining quality is considerably improved,” explains Tom Cornwell of LMT Onsrud. “Eventually, our customer was even able to eliminate one of the planned deburring operations. Of course, the total machining time for the component was substantially reduced.”