Sharp & Tappin’s CNC composite plate saws are helping to revolutionise the production of test specimens and production parts. Aerospace Manufacturing hears how they are finding a variety of applications within the aerospace sector.
Devon-based design and development engineers, Sharp & Tappin’s new Compcut 200 advanced composite plate saw is designed to cut multiple test specimens. Representing the company’s interest in growing its aerospace market for the precision cutting of composites, this new machine has been carefully designed to offer OEMs, tier suppliers, composite R&D teams and test centres affordable access to an easy-to-use yet sophisticated and robust plate saw.
Applications range from rate solutions for composite specimen production from traveller panels used in part release qualification to teardowns of entire structures for evaluation. Indeed, in a recent project for a leading helicopter manufacturer, Sharp & Tappin produced a large capacity custom machine supporting accurate cutting of 280mm deep composite sections over 1.2m.
The machine features an advanced guarding system allowing the composite structures to craned into the machine but still provide an enclosed cutting environment.
“As the materials improve and the drive to reduce weight continues, we will see more and more applications in the aerospace industry as companies move towards composite based solutions,” states the company’s technical director, Ben Sharp.
Offering a host of features, including compact size with small footprint, a high quality of surface finish allowing immediate testing and excellent perpendicularity and parallelism, the Compcut 200 also provides automatic material positioning and clamping, the ability to run multiple specimen cuts and a fully-enclosed work area to ensure user safety.
“Our long experience of tackling the challenges of composite machining and taking a good look at the market, convinced us that there was a niche for a unit like the Compcut 200,” he continues. “We are confident that the 200 offers a tremendous range of features and benefits at an affordable price, is easy to use with a minimum of operator training yet capable of consistently delivering very high-quality cuts.”
In addition to the Compcut 200, Sharp & Tappin’s Compcut 500 offers a cleared panel size of 600 x 600mm for medium to large laminate sizes and test specimens, whilst its Compcut 1000 provides a cleared panel size of 1,200 x 1,200mm for larger laminate sizes and test specimens.
“The Compcut saws offer the ability to quickly and repeatedly produce high quality test specimens with a near zero scrap rate,” Sharp continues. “In fact, we recently machined 240 laminates into 3,840 specimens for a variety of types and didn’t lose one specimen due to being out of tolerance. In reality, the specimens from the Compcut saw exceed the requirements of the common International standards that we perform testing to.”
At the sharp end
The latest generation Compcut saws can manufacture specimens to such a high-quality edge finish that no post preparation of the specimens’ edges to remove machining marks is required. This significantly reduces the amount of preparation time, which offers customers significant cost and timescale benefits.
In the case of the 3,840 specimens mentioned previously, it has saved up to four weeks of labour and programme time not having to perform any post preparation after machining, which represent significant savings in cost and time for the customer.
“The machines are very simple to use and you don’t need to be an experienced CNC machinist to be able to operate one,” Sharp concludes. “I would say that within one hour of training, you will be producing specimens. As I tell our customers, the test results are only as good as the specimens you test. The Sharp & Tappin Compcut saws produce specimens to the very highest standard that nothing on the market we’ve found comes close to.”
