Drilling
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The abrasive waterjet can be used to drill holes in
virtually any type of material. Ormond's engineers
have developed specialized hardware and processes to
drill holes as small as 0.0075 inches in diameter.
Through careful control of the drilling process, the
abrasive waterejet can be used to drill holes at
shallow angles through coated materials such as thermal
barrier coated jet engine parts.
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The image shown to the left is an engine test part where
several dozen 0.012 inch diameter holes were drilled at
30 degrees from the surface through a thermal barrier
coated Nickel alloy.
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Our engineers work closely with turbine engine manufactures
to develop micro hole drilling capabilities using abrasive
waterjets for drilling cooling holes. The advantage of the
abrasive waterjet drilling process is the improved fatigue
performance and straight thru holes when compared to laser
drilled parts, as well as a more consistent airflow due to
improved hole repeatability.
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The image to the right shows a small airflow test sample that
consists of 30 0.0075 inch diameter holes drilled at 30 degrees
from the surface in 0.060 inch single crystal Nickel Alloy.
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In addition to drilling shaped holes in relatively thin materials,
the abrasive waterjet drilling process is capable of drilling deep
holes through difficult to machine materials. An example of a high
aspect borehole that Ormond has drilled is 0.084 inch diameter in 3
inch thick 15-5 stainless steel. The photo shows 0.080 and 0.090 inch
diameter holes drilled in a 1 inch thick Inconel sample.
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The diametrical tolerance for these holes was +/-0.004
inch. This drilling process is being evaluated as an improvement over
traditional mechanical drilling process (where the parts contain
approximately 200,000 holes for a nuclear reactor program.)
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The engineers at Ormond advanced the waterjet drilling technology
to drill small diameter holes in brittle materials such as glass
and pure silicon. The photo shown here is a silicon plate with
several hundred 0.023 inch diameter holes.
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