Ultrasonically assisted drilling of carbon fibre reinforced plastics and Ti6Al4V

Carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) and titanium based materials have excellent properties that make them attractive in the aeronautic industry. Nevertheless both types of materials are considered as difficult-to-machine materials. Ultrasonically assisted drilling (UAD) is a non-traditional hybrid machining process, which combines features of conventional drilling and vibratory machining techniques to obtain remarkable improvements in machinability of advanced, difficult-to-machine materials. In this work ultrasonically assisted drilling (UAD) has been compared to conventional drilling (CD) using both CFRP and Ti6Al4V as workpiece materials, in order to see the benefits of this advanced hybrid process with regard to the quality of the produced parts and also to study the effect of drilling parameters both in CD and in UAD. The results obtained prove that UAD entails lower cutting forces, lower process temperatures, less delamination and better surface finishing at all the conditions tested, so it is a good alternative for manufacturing of CFRP and Ti6Al4V components where drilling is necessary.