A Chinese aerospace company has ordered a turn-key project worth over £500,000 around a Mollart HDI Boremaster deep hole drilling machine that is contracted to produce bores of 89 mm diameter in an aerospace alloy component having an 8 mm wall section. Each bore has to be concentric to the outside diameter of the part within 0.5 mm TIR over its entire 1,500 mm hole depth.

The project, won against four competitors based in America and Europe will incorporate Mollart's latest development of a heavy duty twin bearing design of pressure head.

Said Ian Petitt, Sales Director: "This is a demanding application as we are pushing the Botek BTA tooling head at a feed rate of 80 mm/min into a tough 30 – 40 HRC alloy steel component. The new pressure head will provide the rigidity for the set up and with the cast iron heavy duty bed of the machine filled with industrial concrete, this will absorb any vibration under cut and help to extend the life of the tooling in such an arduous drilling cycle.

To ensure the level of concentricity over the 1,500 mm hole depth is maintained within 0.5 mm TIR the component will be counter-rotated by the workhead against the normal rotation of the BTG drill head as it is fed into the bore.

The Mollart HDI Boremaster has a drilling capacity up to 150 mm diameter by up to 3,000 mm hole depth and is available in single or two spindle arrangements with a wide range of component handling devices available.