Aluminium machining in new dimensions

The machine tool manufacturer bavius technologie gmbh was able to achieve impressive material removal rates of over 20 litres per minute on its new high-end model HBZ AeroCell 160 with a new generation of aluminium high-volume milling cutters from the tool manufacturer MAPAL. The result of this successful collaboration comes at the right time for the aerospace industry, which is taking off again following the downturn caused by coronavirus.

The machine manufacturer, which emerged from the Handtmann Group, has been operating as an independent company under the name bavius technologie gmbh since a management buy-out in 2017 and has its headquarters in Baienfurt. Despite all the changes, the business area has remained the same for almost four decades. CNC machining centres are designed and built for the precise high-speed machining of large workpieces made of aluminium.

“Over 80 percent of our work is for the aerospace industry, where our AeroCell machines are used primarily to produce large structural parts”, explains Amit Paranjape, Sales Manager at bavius. Customers are aircraft manufacturers and their first and second tier suppliers. Large volumes are required to make full use of the bavius systems. There are currently two different machine lines from Baienfurt. The PBZ profile machining centres are used, among other things, to machine seat tracks for aircraft. The HBZ horizontal machining centres are used to manufacture large structural parts from solid. “Everything long and wide is machined here”, explains Paranjape. “Users can machine all the necessary parts for the airframe of an aircraft on our machines.” The material removal rates are extreme, as one example from a bavius customer shows, who mills out finished parts weighing only 35 kilograms from blanks weighing 1.3 tonnes.

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