Article · Aerospace · Composites
New Aerospace Materials Require New Cutting Tools
CFRP-reinforced airframes broke the old hole-making playbook. RobbJack's answer is a solid-diamond 'W'-tipped drill — ground like carbide, but in 100% polycrystalline diamond.
Originally published in Advanced Manufacturing, 2017
Carbon-fiber-reinforced airframes gave aerospace its strength-to-weight, but they broke the tools that drill them — delamination, uncut fibers, and pull-out plague conventional carbide. RobbJack's response was to rethink the tool from the material up: a polycrystalline-diamond 'W'-tipped drill designed specifically for CFRP-reinforced materials.
Grinding diamond like carbide
The breakthrough is in how it's made. Using electrical-discharge grinding, RobbJack can flute solid diamond the way you'd flute carbide. "We can actually grind it like you would carbide," says Mike MacArthur — which means the geometry freedom that makes a good carbide drill is now available in diamond.
From brazed tips to a solid diamond nib
Historically, diamond tooling meant either a flat brazed diamond-carbide combination or sintered diamond in thin areas — both limiting. The new approach takes a solid nib of 100% polycrystalline diamond and machines it directly, delivering all the advantages you could grind into carbide, now in a solid piece of diamond. The result is the clean, delamination-free hole CFRP demands, with the wear life only diamond provides.
When the material changes, the tool has to change with it — solid-diamond geometry is how RobbJack drills the composites that defeat carbide.
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