Barnshaw Metal supplies rolled aluminium sections for composite aerospace components

Barnshaw Metal Bending has supplied Aim Engineering, a manufacturer of bespoke tooling for composite aerospace components, with rolled metal sections to replace press-formed components that had started to crack.

The start of the manufacturing process for many aerospace components is the production jig, which has taken on a greater prominence with the growing application of resin transfer moulding (RTM) process, which is capable of producing complex three-dimensional components using carbon fibre as the structural element.

Aim Engineering is a specialist manufacturer of bespoke production tooling for a variety of industrial sectors including aerospace and had been contracted to produce an aluminium jig for creating fan cowl components for a turbofan engine.

The base for the moulds is a set of thick, curved aluminium plates that would normally have to be machined from billet to produce the exact shapes required for the carbon composite components, however this results in high waste and cost.

Mark Adams, production planner for Aim Engineering, explains: "Initially the alternative was to create the curved aluminium from flat stock using a pressing process, but this was not ideal as we had a plate crack during testing and there were excessive tooling marks on the outer surface. This led us to look for another manufacturing method that would improve the overall quality of the design."

Aim was a little uncertain about the feasibility of producing these jig components using rollers, but having discussed the requirements with Barnshaw it was realised that, given the correct materials, Barnshaws would be able to deliver the required components.

In all, Barnshaw produced ten rolled aluminium sections, up to 800 mm in length and varying in thickness from 83 mm to 114 mm. The level of precision required for the curvature of each section was required to hundredths of a degree, with eight different radii specified for the sections ranging from 101.09° to 212.40°.

To achieve such precision and tight curvature, Barnshaw recommended the use of high quality aluminium 5083 that had been annealed to reduce the risk of cracking. This was then passed through precision controlled rollers to gradually bend the flat aluminium stock until the final dimensions were achieved.

Once the new precision-curved aluminium components were delivered to Aim Engineering they were machined to suit a number of components for the turbofan engine. The superior quality of the thick aluminium segments produced by the rolling process ensured that there was now no scrappage either of the tooling components or of the aircraft production parts.

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