Need For Advanced Material Removal Processes

Advanced Material Removal Processes represent one of the technologies, which emerged after the second world war to cope up with the demands of sophisticated, more durable and cost competitive products. With the advent of new materials such as metal-matrix composites, super-alloys, ceramics, aluminates and high performance polymers etc. and the stringent requirements to machine complex geometrical shapes with high precision and accuracy, a strong need existed for the development of advanced material removal processes. The processes in this category differ from conventional processes in either utilization of energy in an innovative way or, in using forms of energy that were unused for the purpose of manufacturing. The conventional machining processes normally involve the use of energy from electric motors, hydraulics, gravity, etc. and rely on the physical contact between tools and work components. On the contrary, advanced material removal processes utilize energy from sources such as electrochemical reactions, high temperature plasma, high velocity jets and loose abrasives mixed in various carriers etc. Although these processes were originally developed to handle unique problems in aerospace industry (machining of very hard and tough alloys), today wide range of industries have adopted this technology in numerous manufacturing operations.