Vibration Assisted Drilling for increased productivity

In order to increase production rate and quality for the aerospace industry, Vibration Assisted Drilling (VAD) provides significant improvement regarding the drilling times in aircraft structures. Depending on the material, different strategies are capable/necessary to achieve the desired effect. In addition a proper drill bit development, minimal quantity lubrication (MQL) as well as a safe and stable integration it needed.

Combining these features into an intelligent process with inline monitoring is one of the features which makes the difference between pure vibration drilling solutions and a full digital machine integrated system. Broetje-Automation has developed such a system over multiple improvement cycles and has successfully realized it within operational industrial systems.

The presentation will give a view on the used technology bricks as well as results from successful qualification trials. A special focus will be on the impact on cycle times, chip extraction, component load factor and resulting energy consumption per hole.