A novel hybrid clamping system for sheet metals and thin walled structures

Abstract Thin sheets and thin-walled structures are of great economic importance in the aerospace industry due to the enormous efforts being made in lightweight construction. The challenge in machining is to use a reliable clamping device to take account of the sheet metal or component structure as well as to work productively and reliably. For this purpose, a hybrid clamping system has been developed that functions on the basis of vacuum and the adhesive properties of a carrier medium in order to form a complex joining. This method was verified by material tests and then developed to make it usable for the HSC and HPC milling of aluminum sheets. For this purpose, demonstrator parts were manufactured in order to test the critical loads of this clamping system on the one hand and to produce structures that cannot be realized economically with other machining methods on the other hand.