Most of the processes for using composites generate a burr on the periphery and do not make it possible to obtain holes of small diameters. Machining is therefore an essential operation, among other things, for drilling and finishing composite structures.
The machining of a composite material mainly consists in cutting the fibers while avoiding generating the defects inherent in the use of this material (delamination, chipping, surface burning, cracking, etc.).
The term of completion of parts in composite materials will be preferred to that of machining because the operations concerned will most often be reduced, in the final phase, to cutting to length, to the elimination of the zones affected by edge effects. , the creation of fixing holes, the thickness setting ...
The operations currently carried out on composite parts are of three kinds.
We have :
- Drilling / boring operations.
- Clipping operations.
- Surfacing operations.
For this, the main technologies used for the implementation of these processes are:
- Chip removal.
- The laser The water jet.