The Bromsgrove-based tooling company Walter GB Ltd (www.walter-tools.com) recently joined forces with work-holding specialist Schunk Intec at the Knowledge Transfer Centre in Sheffield to host a customer innovation day designed to showcase ‘best-in-class five-axis aerospace machining’.

The audience of aerospace production engineers was able to learn how the companies’ new tooling and work-holding developments can bring substantial benefits to the machining of aluminium wing ribs — then see the results in the adjacent AMRC with Boeing Centre, where a demonstration part was machined on a Starrag Ecospeed machining centre (this is one of eight Starrag machines at the AMRC and the accompanying Nuclear AMRC).

Jim Dale, Walter’s component manager (business and application development), outlined the distortion and machining challenges presented when producing one-hit finishes and tight corners on aluminium workpieces with walls just 1.5mm thick and corners with 6mm radii.

The sample wing rib used for the demonstration was 1,500mm long x 280mm wide x 80mm high and had pockets up to 50mm deep; it was jointly designed by Walter and Schunk Intec to highlight the capabilities of their tooling and work-holding technologies.

Mr Dale said: “By applying a number of new Walter milling cutters in conjunction with Schunk Intec’s Vero-S Aviation system, we were able to demonstrate an ideal solution, particularly as the pneumatic Vero-S system enables component stresses to be relieved between machining operations by simply releasing and then re-clamping the workpiece in-situ — without the need for separate set-ups.

“Developing and supplying ‘pre-set’ tooling packages to suit specific machining platforms and processes is one of the strengths of Walter’s ‘Engineering Kompetenz’ strategy; and in terms of our aerospace customers, it is being successfully applied globally to titanium and aluminium structures, as well as to engines and landing-gear programmes.”