In the present study, CFRP/Ti6Al4V stacks were machined with abrasive water jet using different process parameters in order evaluate the viability of AWJ industrial application as a substitute of conventional drilling. The effect of the stack configuration, the traverse feed rate, the cutting tool (combination of orifice and focusing tube diameter and abrasive mass flow rate), and the pressure over the kerf profile, taper angle, and surface roughness has been analyzed through an ANOVA analysis and related to the physical parameters of the AWJ process. As a result, a positive taper angle is observed in Ti6Al4V while a negative is observed in CFRP in almost all cutting conditions. This leads to obtain an X-type or barrel-type kerf profile depending on the stack configuration. In addition, the surface roughness can be as low as 6.5 μm in both CFRP and Ti6Al4V materials at 95 mm/min when CFRP/Ti6Al4V configuration is used.

Abrasive Water Jet (AWJ) technology has demonstrated to be an interesting manufacturing process for space, aircraft, boat and automotive sectors due to its specific advantages when machining composite materials. However, AWJ cutting of composite laminates possesses several challenges. It is necessary to develop a methodology to adapt the process parameters for each type of FRP & CFRP material which will allow AWJ trimming operations to be easily carried out on composite materials, since machine manufacturers still do not provide good databases for composite cutting. The presented work aims at studying the behaviour of a machinability model in composite materials. The machinability index for various composite materials with different thicknesses was found experimentally, which showed very different results for different materials. A study of the effect of the abrasive waterjet process parameters on the quality of cut (taper and surface roughness) was carried out

Hot stamping dies include cooling channels to treat the formed sheet. The optimum cooling channels of dies and molds should adapt to the shape and surface of the dies, so that a homogeneous temperature distribution and cooling are guaranteed. Nevertheless, cooling ducts are conventionally manufactured by deep drilling, attaining straight channels unable to follow the geometry of the tool. Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) is an additive manufacturing technique capable of fabricating nearly free-form integrated cooling channels and therefore shape the so-called conformal cooling. The present work investigates the design and manufacturing of conformal cooling ducts, which are additively built up on hot work steel and then milled in order to attain the final part. Their mechanical performance and heat transfer capability has been evaluated, both experimentally and by means of thermal simulation. Finally, conformal cooling conduits are evaluated and compared to traditional straight channels. The results show that LMD is a proper technology for the generation of cooling ducts, opening the possibility to produce new geometries on dies and molds and, therefore, new products.

Laser metal deposition (LMD) is an additive manufacturing process that allows the manufacturing of near-net-shape products. This could mean significant savings in terms of materials and costs in the manufacturing of high-performance components for the aeronautical industry. In this work, an analysis of how the LMD processing of alloy 718 affects the final machining has been carried out. For this purpose, a comparative study has been done by means of the monitoring of the end milling process of a part manufactured by LMD and a rough-milled part from forged material. Differences between process outputs such as chip morphology and cutting forces were studied. Material characteristics such as microstructure, hardness and mechanical properties were also analyzed.