It has been announced that Seco’s
Inspiration through Innovation 2019 manufacturing best-practice event will take place at the company’s ‘state of the art’ Technology Centre in Alcester on 9 and 10 October.
The company is one of the world’s largest providers of metal-cutting solutions for milling, stationary tools, hole-making and tooling systems.
This year’s Inspiration through Innovation will focus on the aerospace industry, and this is reflected in the event’s branding and promotional material.
A scale model of a jet-aircraft tail fin, embossed with three embracing arms, has been produced by fourth-year Seco technician apprentice Emma Roberts.
This was machined from a solid aluminium billet on a five-axis Hermle C32 — in a total cycle time of 2hr.
The project used technology from a number of Seco’s technical partners, including Siemens (NX software), CG Tech (Vericut simulation and verification software), Thame Workholding (Lang work-holding systems) and Houghton (cutting fluids).
Ms Roberts said: “The roughing operations, where over 60% of the material was removed, were performed using Seco face-milling cutters and took 8min to complete.
“Most of the machining time was spent on finishing operations — in particular, working on the curved surface of the fin using small-diameter ball-nose cutters.
“This was quite a pains-taking operation; it was important that we didn’t create any step marks on the part and that a good surface finish was realised.
“Another time-consuming operation was creating the three-armed logo detail, using ball-nose cutters. Machining the fin was an interesting challenge, and I am pleased with the result.”