Fighting talk

Engineering in the Coventry area has long established links with the production of military fighting vehicles and transport.

One company continuing this tradition is Lightning Aerospace – an organisation involved in the rapid production of component parts for the defence industry.

When production director Peter McNiece, joined the company in 2009, he brought with him a wealth of experience – particularly in the field of waterjet cutting. Although the company was already using laser and waterjet profiling technology, its equipment was old and obsolete. Consequently, one of the first purchases made by Mr McNiece was an NC 4020 duplex profiler from Water Jet Sweden. Its attributes include a specially developed Fanuc 300i control system and the ability to auto adjust the distance between the two cutting heads via the CAD station.

With the new WJS profiler now installed, the company is able to offer a 24 hour turnaround facility that is especially appreciated by MoD contractors engaged in having to machine rapidly and accurately, new materials for the advanced military equipment needed for delivery to war zones globally.

One of the widely acknowledged advantages of waterjet profiling, is its ability to produce clean cut edges in a wide range of materials from steel and aluminium through to 300mm thick titanium.

Specialist materials such as Kevlar – used widely on personnel protection equipment – can prove to be challenging for traditional cutting methods as it may take the form of thick panels made up from 50 or more laminations to a total thickness of more than two inches. According to Lightning Aerospace however, waterjet cutting has proven to be particularly suitable for applications of this type.

Another difficult material that has been problematic in the past is a composite sandwich sheet comprising stiff outer skins containing an energy absorbent core designed to nullify the impact of high velocity pieces of shrapnel. The very nature of this core, which will tear using mechanical methods of cutting, meant that only waterjet offered a practical way of contouring it.

Even this process, though leaving an acceptable edge when contouring externally, created a substantial disruption of the core when penetrating the skin at the start of an internal profile. Lightning overcame this problem by equipping the WJS 4020 with a pneumatic drill head that could be rapidly substituted for one of the waterjet heads. By programming to drill strategically placed 3mm prep holes through the sheets and the adjacent waterjet nozzle to commence profiling by entering through the small holes, the problem was resolved.

“The installation of the new machine went very smoothly,” Mr McNiece advises, “and we can now tender for more demanding and complex work that we previously had to overlook. In addition we can now undertake routine work more efficiently than before, thanks to the way the built-in nesting program, when combined with twin head operation, makes for both efficient material usage and high productivity on volume work.

He concludes: “We are finding that with the help of the new WJS installation and the many improvements it has provided, our business is growing despite tough operating conditions.”

Water Jet Sweden
www.waterjetsweden.com  

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