Machining thick Aluminium
Machining thick Aluminium
(OP)
Does thick aluminium plate have any " locked in stresses"
From a disc 30" dia and 5" thick we wish to make a saucer to very precise curvature. If we machine the concave face first to exact curvature will there be any changes when we remove a lot of metal from the other face? Its only the concave side that critical so maybe we machine this side last and then it will be as per planned curve, but it would be a lot easier to have done it first. Hope someone can advise.
Regards CM
From a disc 30" dia and 5" thick we wish to make a saucer to very precise curvature. If we machine the concave face first to exact curvature will there be any changes when we remove a lot of metal from the other face? Its only the concave side that critical so maybe we machine this side last and then it will be as per planned curve, but it would be a lot easier to have done it first. Hope someone can advise.
Regards CM





RE: Machining thick Aluminium
Regards,
Cory
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RE: Machining thick Aluminium
RE: Machining thick Aluminium
Even though this procedure is for Cryo mirrors I've seen very similar procedure for terrestrial mirrors.
http://www.techbriefs.com/content/view/479/32/
RE: Machining thick Aluminium
I'm not sure what you mean by "very precise." Are you talking 1/4-wave, 1/20-wave? You might need to interferometrically check the surface at each step of the process to ensure that the previous processing hasn't changed the surface figure.
TTFN
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RE: Machining thick Aluminium