A new range of high performance threaded shank drills has been launched by AMEC, specifically for the aerospace and defence industries, which use replacement insert technology and are fully compatible with both Quackenbush® and Lübbering® drilling systems.
AMEC revolutionised manufacturing with the introduction of the T-A® replaceable insert system in the early 1990s and extended the range with the next generation GEN2 T-A® technology in 2001, both of which continue to increase their market share and remain the drill system of choice for countless manufacturing industries. The latest third generation GEN3SYS® system, launched in 2007 is also now well established in the aerospace and defence sector.
Designed as direct replacements for existing drill systems used with air powered drills produced by manufacturers such as Quackenbush and Lübbering, the system uses industry standard threaded shanks and cover diameters from 9.5mm up to 35mm using AMEC's T-A® replacement insert technology.
AMEC's T-A system not only provides significant tool life improvements over existing solid carbide twist drills and removes the need for drill regrinding, but also enables considerable time savings to be made as there is no need to extend the drill fully for removal, as only the tip requires changing with the AMEC solution. A further advantage is that just by changing the grade of insert, rather than the whole drill body, the AMEC T-A drills can be used on a variety of material, such as titanium, aerospace grade aluminium and alloys as well as composites and aluminium/composite material stacks, giving increased production flexibility.
The advanced insert technologies also produce holes with tighter tolerances than traditional ground drills as well as increasing productivity. Already in one application, the quality of hole accuracy, tolerance and finish has meant that a reaming operation has been able to be removed from the production process, which has saved additional time and manufacturing cost.
AMEC's Managing Director, Rod Crawford, explained; "Our advanced tooling and high performance systems are already widely used in the aerospace industry and this new system enables the inherent productivity, accuracy and performance benefits to be gained in applications using air-powered threaded shank drill systems."