Metal Removal
ADVANCED MACHINING TECHNOLOGY
Whitcraft is your recognized industry leader in machining high-quality, complex, tight-tolerance shapes from some even the most challenging alloys. Our milling expertise stems from our internally developed and refined machine designs and techniques to ensure superior precision and quality in each of your parts.
MILLING
Whitcraft offers a wide range of milling capability including 7 axis turn-mills that can handle massive envelopes up to 70” X 70”
ABRASIVE FLOW MACHINING (AFM)
Whitcraft’s AFM technology produces superior part finishes and part dimensions for your critical turbine engine rotating components. AFM is a surface finishing process characterized by flowing an abrasive-laden fluid through a workpiece, which smooths and polishes rough surfaces. This process is particularly suited for complex critical rotating components.
ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE MACHINING (EDM)
Whitcraft provides multi-axis and conventional turning for your part manufacturing needs. Turning is a machining process used to create rotational parts by cutting away unwanted material using a turning machine or lathe.
TURNING
Whitcraft utilizes upset and extrusion operations to produce the most cost-efficient pre-forming shape. This flexibility provides more control over the finished forging.
Extrusion and upsetting operations are forging processes used to increase or decrease a raw metal workpiece’s diameter or cross-sectional area. These operations are performed prior to the final forging operation and are necessary to efficiently distribute the material required to fill the final forge die cavity.
CREEP FEED GRINDING
Whitcraft performs both single-wheel and dual-wheel creep feed grinding on nickel-based alloys, steels, and chrome. CNC-controlled creep feed grinding uses a continuous dressing process for turbine blade profile grinding, allowing for shorter cycle times and higher throughput of difficult to machine alloys typical of turbine blades.
CBN 5-AXIS RADIAL GRINDING
Whitcraft radial grinding capabilities machine curved features into turbine blades and vanes. This large 5-axis super abrasive grinding machine features a 40-tool magazine changer, allowing for multiple machining features to be performed in one machine, reducing the required number of machines/operations needed to produce complex turbine blades and vanes.
SPLINING AND HONING
Whitcraft ensures complex geometry precision and accuracy in a repeated production rate environment. Our splining and honing applications utilize our state-of-the-art 5-axis CNC technology to produce your design-accurate, complex, tight-tolerance parts.
Splining is the process of machining splines (ridges or teeth) onto Blisk/IRG’s, Impellers and other mechanical power transmission components. Honing is an abrasive machining process producing a precision surface, in both vertical and complex geometry applications, using an abrasive stone along a controlled path to improve the surface’s geometric form and finish.
WATERJET CUTTING
Waterjet cutting combines a high-pressure water stream combined with an abrasive to cut thick and difficult to cut materials with relative ease and speed when compared to conventional methods. This method is typically used for excess flash removal on forgings, replacing difficult manual sawing. Utilizing a robot-driven cutting head, waterjet cutting produces a high degree of precision repetition for efficient manufacturing.
LASER CUTTING
Laser cutting and Drilling is a technology that uses a laser to pierce or slice materials. Laser cutting works by directing the output of a high-power laser most commonly through optics.
The laser optics and CNC (computer numerical control) are used to direct the material or the laser beam generated. The focused laser beam is directed at the material, which then either melts, burns, vaporizes away, or is blown away by a jet of gas leaving an edge with a high-quality surface finish. Whitcraft’s Co2, Yag and Fiber capabilities range from 2kw up to 20kw, flat pattern, 5 and 6 axis machines cutting and drilling materials such as Nickel, Steel and Titanium.
BAR FEED AND SMALL MACHINING
A bar feeder or barfeed is an optional piece of support equipment that allows bar stock to be automatically loaded into a CNC lathe, greatly increasing productivity. Whitcraft’s capabilities can accommodate bar diameter up to 2.75” to produce pins, bushings, bearings, ferrule, and adapters.
