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The aerospace industry is faced with ever more demands on quality, variety and complexity of their products. The spectrum of part materials certainly encompasses a much wider range than any industrial manufacturing while the cost of parts and components by design, function and machining are highest, too. Hence aerospace manufacturing's perpetual quest for new, advanced machining processes that: yield predictable, consistent results. lower the machining cost per part. decrease main machining times. increase flexibility and adaptability. improve produced quality. minimize operations. The three advanced processes that can accommodate these demands best are one-pass finish-machining, (near) dry-machining and high-speed machining. ONE-PASS FINISH-MACHINING - The key is to finish-machine given part castings with one operation at high precision, instead of step by step machining. The one-pass approach is to include even complicated part configurations and contours.

High Speed Machining, or better yet High Velocity Machining is often chosen especially for new investments in manufacturing, at least when machining non-ferrous metals. This makes sense given the progress in machine spindle technology and the velocity with which the machine axes can travel. This in conjunction with advanced cutting material, particularly polycrystalline diamonds, substantially reduces main machining and non-production time. Different is the situation when machining ferrous metal. Cast iron, Carbon and allow steels as well as super alloys; all have their specific characteristics making it difficult to apply real high cutting speeds. Since it is either technologically not feasible and/or impractical because of an unfavorable price/performance ratio to apply cutting speeds close to those applicable for non-ferrous metals, other avenues have to be taken.

When consumers began to demand more product reliability and product choices and producers searched for ways to satisfy them, companies had to reinvent manufacturing techniques and objectives. To accommodate “the needs and wants of the customer” and “doing it right the first time,” has quality and cost considerations right at the center of it all. Obviously, the manufacturer capable of producing a quality product productively and economically, has the edge in a competitive marketplace. It is a misconception to assume, that quality and cost are diverging criteria. In fact, there are numerous proven tools, systems and processes, if applied properly and systematically, that lower manufacturing costs by simultaneously increasing product quality. Individually, they are good - together they are formidable. The path to Low Cost - High Quality leads to: PROCESS-ORIENTED MANUFACTURING - A given process determines performance and precision.

In a shrinking world, there is the chance to reap the benefits of globalized strategies. Going around the world to purchase, design, build and market products internationally and jointly, offers immense possibilities for carmakers and suppliers. The two concepts of mass production with cost/price orientation and customized production with service orientation have merged to mass-customizing, affecting automakers and their suppliers worldwide alike.

Carmakers are adopting “agile” manufacturing principles in an effort to achieve product variety in style and volume and doing so, within shortest possible changeover times to minimize the response time to demanding customers. For the manufacturing floor, agility means to be ultra-flexible in tooling and automation. Cycle-time reduction, fast through-put, high machine uptime, minimum machining passes, predictable machining results and the first part - good part principle are at the core of it all. In addition, machining processes have to be adaptable to transferlines and CNC-cells, or a combination thereof and if possible, reusable for new projects to assure a short and economical pipeline to the next generation of products. Several new, advanced machining processes in metalcutting embrace “agility” and integrate its manufacturing principle. They complete the technology chain of machine tool - toolholding - cutting tool, to form “agile” processes.

Global manufacturing has the individual automotive component plants, on virtually all continents, scrambling for the “edge” to be the most competitive manufacturer and thus be the producer of choice. To be competitive in price and quality and that over “the long haul” is a tall order, indeed. A lot depends on the machining processes producing the components that, assembled, make up the powertrain. While outsourcing other automotive parts might be the right economical and technological choice, to produce ones own engines and transmissions is still one of the areas of true “value adding” and also a matter of the manufacturer's image. Hence the industry's effort to offer ever better, more potent families of engines and transmissions. New, advanced machining processes have evolved recently, that make manufacturing more productive and predictable. The three areas most promising are: One-pass finish-machining High-speed machining (Near) Dry-machining