Thin wall machining
Thin wall monolithic structures
Do you need to reduce load weight while increasing rigidity and performance? You’ve come to the right place! AUT is the world leader in milling thin wall monolithic structures for aerospace applications, a field where there’s no room for error. AUT’s know-how and precision machining skills have led us to produce structures up to 55 in. by 146 in. (1.4 m by 3.7 m) with thicknesses of 0.012 in. (0.3 mm) from aluminum and titanium up to 5 in. high. This method is a structural alternative when weight and rigidity are critical factors. Using this qualified procedure in place of traditional structural fabrication methods has provided engineers and designers with an alternative to design larger, more complex or one-piece structures.
The advantages of this procedure are:
- Significant weight reduction
- Overall cost savings by eliminating parts of the fabrication process and numerous pieces
- Elimination of cumbersome, complicated honeycomb-type structures
- Improved structural, mechanical, and thermal features
- Substantially improved antenna signal quality reception by reducing the effect of passive intermodulation (PIM)
AUT has truly mastered the art of thin-walled machining, as shown by these impressive statistics:
- Over 8,000 hours of engineering qualification models (EQM) and prototyping
- Over 40,000 hours of flight panels
Our legacy projects include
- ACeS I & II
- Inmarsat 4
- RadarSat 2
- Terrestar 1
- Alphasat
- Skynet
- Platet for the xenon propellant system used on NASA’s Dawn mission to Mars
- Heat exchanger cover for the International Space Station main bus switching unit (MBSU)
- Joint seals for the space shuttle wings
