Brunswick achieves a Silver Award from BAE Systems

The Award recognises the major savings and productivity gains made by BAE Systems Salmesbury and Brunswick Tooling in the production of precision bores up to 75 mm diameter using Brunswick's carbide tipped reaming system. "Having already achieved a Bronze Award for work done with BAE Systems, we are extremely proud to have gone to that next level," says Paul Briggs, managing director of Brunswick Tooling."To be chosen from the 2,000 submissions made by BAE Systems business units from across the UK, Europe, Middle East and Australia for a Silver Award is a major achievement." The project started 12 months ago when Brunswick Tooling was approached to undergo cutting trials on a range of titanium and stainless steel components destined for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, in particular the hinge line bores for the horizontal tails and rudders, and to position and attach the vertical tails to the aircraft. As a result of these trials the Brighouse, West Yorkshire-based, cutting tool specialist developed specific geometries for its Brunswick reamers capable of achieving extremely tight dimensional tolerances and high quality surface finishes. Working in close partnership with the team from BAE Systems, Brunswick Tooling has reduced the time required to produce each bore-set from three days to five minutes by integrating the process onto the CNC machines at Salmesbury and eliminating many manual operations. With a 100%, right first time, success rate, this will enable BAE Systems to achieve its target of delivering one F-35 a day by 2015. The carbide-tipped Brunswick reamers and pre-reaming cutters developed for the project are producing bores between 20 and 75 mm diameter and have been manufactured with integral ISO50, HSK100, or Coromant Capto C5 and C6 shanks, and are non-adjustable, unlike the conventional Brunswick reamers. This eliminates the possibility of any run-out or manual intervention, given the high added value of the components being machined.