(upbeat techno music)
(drill whirring)
Hi, I'm Ross Adams
and I'm an application engineer at Markforged.
My previous position was a tool designer
at an Aerospace and Defense company.
We're doing a video today to do an application spotlight
on a particular application that has a strong niche
inside the aerospace and defense industry.
This particular application is a drill plate.
Drill plates go by a lot of different names throughout
the industry, they could be drill guides,
drill jigs, drill templates.
What they're used for is to repeatedly
drill a hole pattern onto a component.
Just like any other type of tool,
it makes a cumbersome operation much simpler.
So where are drill plates used?
Well, they're used on operations that
the drill needs to be done by hand or on the bench.
So instances where the part is too large
for a CNC machine or perhaps it's part of an assembly
that you can't bring to the machine,
or it could be a composite lay up where inherently
through the manufacturing process
you'd need to do post processing to achieve
a hole pattern that mounts into the component.
What are drill plates used for?
Well they're used to drill the locations of holes
for things such as socket head cap screws,
hi-locks, rivets, dowel pins,
any type of fastener or locator that goes onto an aircraft.
And these fasteners are used to assemble
components such as brackets, clips, hydraulic lines,
duct work, fairings, door handles,
all sorts of different components that go onto aircrafts.
Now why would you 3D print
a drill plate verses machine one?
Well a lot of the times it makes sense
to machine drill plates.
These are instances where the geometry
is going to be orthogonal, and uniform hole patterns.
So this is much simpler for a machining operation.
But in aerospace, often times we're dealing with
contoured components to reduce aerodynamic drag.
And this is gonna be much more complex
for machining operations.
So Markforged offers a unique solution for 3D printing
where we have composite and metal 3D printers,
and you can really leverage these to increase
your velocity of the tool design.
Continuous carbon fiber reinforcement really makes the
tool operation much more durable,
'cause we know that when these tools get used down
on the shop floor, they're not gonna be gentle with them.
With continuous fiber we can get the strength
of aluminum, but the light weight of plastic.
As well as non-marring features,
so when we lay it up against the part,
we're not gonna scratch it.
And it's just gonna withstand and be much more durable
than plastic tooling with other FDM style 3D printing.
The application that we'll be spotlighting today
is locating this bracket onto this six inch aluminum tubing.
Now this bracket requires two socket head cap screws
which are a 1/4-20 thread.
So we're gonna need a tool that drills the pilot hole
and then taps it at 1/4-20.
So the way the tool works is quite simple,
we take the tool and we locate it onto the tubing.
Then we're gonna take a clamp and
make sure that that stays locked in.
After that, we're gonna take our first bushing spoon,
and insert it into this liner bushing,
and drill our pilot hole at .210 inch diameter.
After we remove that, we'll take the second bushing spoon
which has a 1/4 inch ID,
and we'll use this as our tap guide
when we go in to tap it with 1/4-20.
After that we'll move on to the second hole,
and then our operation is complete,
and we can locate this bracket precisely onto the tubing.
Now we are going to procure the tools for this operation.
We will begin by printing the drill plate.
Before we are able to print this tool,
we need to prepare it in our slicing software called Eiger.
You can take a CAD model in STL format,
determine the orientation and material selection,
then view the internal tool paths,
and selectively reinforce layers
with continuous carbon fiber.
Then we can select a printer and seamlessly start the print.
After I receive a notification that my print is finished,
I can walk over to the printer
and easily remove it off of the print bed.
Then we need to do some light post-processing steps
to prepare the tool to be used on the shop floor.
First we are going to remove the tearaway supports,
which can easily be done with a set of hand pliers.
Then we are going to use a contrast filler
to make the text more distinct from the part,
for tool number identification and operating instructions.
And finally, we will heat press in serrated drill bushings
into the tool using a soldering iron.
While the drill plate is printing,
our procurement department gave us a heads up
that the renewable drill bushing
is made to order and has a three week lead time.
Instead, we are going to utilize the Markforged
Metal X 3D printer and print
the bushing in D2 tool steel.
This is only a two hour print,
so we can get it into the debinding station overnight,
and then into a Sinter-2 furnace the next day.
After the bushing is sintered,
we will do a quick touch up and open up
the ID to a tighter tolerance.
This three day lead time is much more attractive
than waiting three weeks from the supplier.
Once we have all the details for the tool,
we can assemble it together and do
a tool tryout on the shop floor.
(upbeat music)