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Lessons
Learned
Eck Industries has produced three (3)
transmission cases for prototype evaluation by the AAAV prime vendor, General Dynamics.
The production of the transmission case
illustrates --
The successful casting in no-bake sand
of a large, extremely complex, thin wall component in aluminum-SiC composite.
The use of polycrystalline diamond
tools and specialized tool geometry kept the machining costs of the composite within the
defined cost envelope.
A 10% weight savings over the original
355 aluminum alloy design, because the higher modulus of the Al-SiC composite permits
thinner walls
This was a prototype development study
and additional material and machining costs were justified in terms of performance
benefits.
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