TEK4 is opening a brand-new purpose built technical center in Spring 2019. 

It will be located in Blaby, Leicestershire, less than 6 miles from our current site. The new facility will offer excellent accessibility to the M1 motorway, less then 10 minutes away. 

The new facility offers enhanced customer facilities and excellent parking. It will be 5 times larger than our existing site giving us the capacity to deliver up to 10 machines per month, with areas specificity designed for the R&D department and for running trials and demonstrations. This new development will facilitate continued growth at TEK4 enabling us to continue to exceed customer expectations.

The complex and intricate patterns of cooling holes required on the latest generation of aero engine and IGT blades and vanes are fundamental in satisfying the ever-increasing demands for increased fuel efficiency and reduced noise emissions. Non-conductive ceramic coatings are also applied to further protect the parts from thermal forces. 

 

This thermal barrier coating (TBC) is not conducive to the EDM process used to produce the cooling holes, meaning that this has traditionally been applied after the holes have been drilled. 

 

TEK4’s machines can be a fitted with a Laser ablation system to enable the thermal barrier coating to be removed before the cooling holes are drilled enabling significant benefits to the production process to be achieved.

 

Tek4’s Drill After Coating (DAC) technology uses a 100w high frequency fibre Laser to remove non-conductive coatings on components. This technology is confined within the FHD EDM machine, allowing for a single operation solution to drill after coating. 

 

Calibrating the Laser system and the EDM system to each other is achieved using a patented alignment procedure whereby the Laser cuts a round hole in a metal plate which is then probed by the integrated CMM probe. The CMM probe is used to probe the position of the part and the electrode using TEK4’s 3 steps to accuracy procedure. The machine now knows the exact position of the Laser beam relative to the machine axis’ and the electrode and automatically updates tool offsets for the laser position.

 

This alignment procedure provides perfect alignment of the Laser and EDM systems, enabling very high levels of accuracy and repeatability to be achieved with the drill after coating procedure.

 

The integration of the laser system in the same machine as the EDM process allows very high levels of accuracy to be achieved between the 2 processes keeping overcut of the thermal barrier coating to minimum.