Strategies for Burr Minimization and Cleanability in Aerospace and Automotive Manufacturing

The quality of machined components in the aerospace and automotive industries has become increasingly critical in the past years because of greater complexity of the workpieces, miniaturization, usage of new composite materials, and tighter tolerances. This trend has put continual pressure not only on improvements in machining operations, but also on the optimization of the cleanability of parts. The paper reviews recent work done in these areas at the University of California-Berkeley. This includes: Finite element modeling of burr formation in stacked drilling; development of drill geometries for burr minimization in curved-surface drilling; development of a enhanced drilling burr control chart; study of tool path planning in face-milling; and cleanability of components and cleanliness metrics.