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Aero-style machining coming to auto: as the auto industry turns to materials that are certainly more exotic than the cast iron and aluminum that are familiar, the sorts of processes associated with aerospace manufacturing--albeit kicked up several notches--will find greater application.

Article Excerpt
There used to be a big gulf between the processes and materials in auto and aero. And it used to be, more or less, that aero would borrow processes or practices from auto for the simple reason that auto had managed to come up with approaches that were, in order to be done in automotive volumes, more or less optimized, or at least dialed in to the extent that would make them cost-effective enough to perform mass production. Aero, where things are generally done at a more leisurely pace (no 60-per-hour airframes) and with a significantly more advanced materials. After all, the budgets are not only bigger, but the conditions, rigors and requirements are greater.

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But now things are changing, says Greg Hyatt, vice president of the Mori Seiki Machining Technology Laboratory (www.moriseikius.com). "As automotive is pursuing higher and higher fuel economy, they're driving up the combustion temperatures, and we're starting to see the use of materials normally associated with turbo machinery and jet aircraft," he says. Among the materials are stainless alloys, nickel-based alloys, and titanium. "The cutting conditions used for those materials in aerospace are completely inappropriate for automotive production. They're extremely slow."

But Hyatt points out that the fundamental processes are being modified so that there is applicability in automotive: comparatively speaking, they become "high-speed machining." As he observes, "High speed is relative. Machining titanium valves and stainless manifolds is not high speed relative to aluminum machining, but it is high speed relative to the aerospace industry. But to get costs under control and to...

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