Cryogenic Machining Adoption - Productivity Improvement at Lockheed Martin

Case Study 14 of  Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course

Industrial Engineering Case Studies Collection 

This note is an illustration of productivity improvement by adopting an alternative process. This particular process is new process and Lockheed martin even participated in its development.

2016 News
Creare’s Breakthrough Cryogenic Machining Process Significantly Reduces F-35 Titanium Manufacturing Costs in Lockheed Martin

Creare Incorporated has developed a breakthrough high-speed titanium machining process that will significantly reduce the manufacturing cost of critical titanium parts on multiple aircrafts, including Lockheed Martin’s F-35.

Though the high strength-to-weight ratio of titanium alloys make them attractive for use in military aircraft, their high strength and low thermal conductivity concentrate heat at the cutting edge during machining. This heating limits the attainable processing speed due to accelerated tool wear, which in turn results in increased part costs. These excessive machining costs have limited the applications of titanium to specialized applications, such as high tech aircraft. Creare’s innovation is the development of an internal cooling approach for cutting tools using small flows of liquid cryogens, which enables increased processing speeds and extends tool life by up to a factor of 10, markedly reducing the manufacturing cost of critical titanium parts.

Creare began developing this technology in 2004 when the company received its initial Phase I Navy SBIR contract. Lockheed Martin became interested in the Creare cooling technology for its F-35 production challenges and helped secure funding as part of a larger F-35 initiative to enable the Phase III program. As a result of this Phase III work, the combined team of Creare, Lockheed Martin, and MAG Industrial Automation Systems has successfully validated this technology for the production of F-35 titanium parts and integrated the approach on production machine tools. In addition, the technology has been featured in several key manufacturing publications and demonstrated world-wide at numerous high-visibility manufacturing industry events, setting the stage for the commercial introduction of the technology in late-2011- early-2012.

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/suppliers/news/whos-knocking/2016/creare.html


Hartwig customer and leading aerospace OEM Lockheed Martin acquired an MA-600H II horizontal machining center from Okuma America Corporation (Charlotte, NC) that is equipped with a patented cryogenic machining system from 5ME (Cincinnati, OH).

According to Lockheed, the cryogenic technology will help lower the cost of large titanium parts by an estimated 30%.
https://www.hartwiginc.com/newsletter-archives/cryogenic-machining-efficiency-reigns-supreme


_______________



5ME Video
_______________


More About Cryogenic Machining

Optimization of machining parameters during cryogenic turning

of AISI D3 steel

ANURAG SHARMA, R C SINGH and RANGANATH M SINGARI*

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Delhi 110042, India

Sådhanå (2020)45:124, Indian Academy of Sciences

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12046-020-01368-4   

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12046-020-01368-4

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330008618_Cryogenic_Machining_of_Titanium_Ti-5553_Alloy

5ME and Okuma team to demonstrate the cryogenics’ advantages of aerospace part processing.

Robert Brooks

MAR 25, 2015

https://www.americanmachinist.com/machining-cutting/article/21898657/cold-is-hot-again-for-cryo-machiningprogramming-partners

Productivity Science

Updated on 11 May 2020

Pub on 31 May 2020