REGISTER FOR YOUR FREE COPY OF AEROSPACE MANUFACTURING BY VISITING: WWW.AERO-MAG.COM 46 AEROSPACEMANUFACTURING | SEPTEMBER 2010


Aerospace Manufacturing and BCI Aerospace together profile world-class aerospace industry suppliers of note.


When it comes to meeting customers and doing business face to face, Diamoutils’ Jean Francois Bucourt reckons that B2B events like Aeromart provide the right tools for the right job. Mike Richardson reports.


A cut above the rest


Tools of the trade: Diamoutils specialises in precision diamond tooling, PCD and CBN inserts, and brazed PCD and CBN boring bars


tooling for grinding applications. By the start of the 1970s, the company had made inroads into


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polycrystalline diamond tools (PCD) and cubical boron nitride (CBN) cutting tools to satisfy the manufacturing industry’s insatiable appetite for high performance cutting tools to machine hard steels and exotic alloys. At this time, high speed steel (HSS) tools were used for machining aluminium, whilst tungsten carbide tooling was primarily used for machining hard steels. However, tool life tended to be too short and metal cutting performance unsatisfactory. Diamoutils realised that the introduction of PCD and CBN


tooling would help bring its customers increased improvements in tool life; a trend borne out by the automotive industry, which at this time, was gradually moving away from carbide tools in favour of CBN and PCD solutions that improved both the lifetime and the performance of the cutting tools for mass car production.


stablished in 1920 and located in Annecy, near Geneva, Diamoutils initially began by serving the bearing manufacturing industry by specialising in diamond


Initially, Diamoutils developed tooling solely for the


automotive industry, but by 1975, had diversified into developing solutions for civil and military aerospace applications. Its first partnership was with Dassault Aviation for various Mirage jet fighter components, such as carbon fibre components for wing spars and ribs as well as hard chrome grinding of landing gear items. Diamoutils also developed tooling applications for the space industry, producing a patent to produce PCD drills to machine carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) and ceramic materials for Dassault and Aerospatiale’s Hermes spaceplane project.


The evolutionary cycle Conscious of the increasing evolutionary developments in PCD and CBN tools, the start of the 1990s saw carbide cutting tool suppliers looking to diversify their product offerings by manufacturing PCD and CBN tooling too. Among them is Diamoutils, which has grown to become one of the leading exponents of precision diamond tooling, PCD, CBN inserts for milling, turning, grooving and threading, as well as brazed PCD


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