AE203 Engineering Practice 1 - Manufacturing
This module introduces first-year aeronautics students to the principal manufacturing process families (casting, bulk and sheet forming, machining, joining, powder and additive processes, and composites), with an emphasis on digital, CNC, and algorithmic methods, taught through recurring aerospace case studies and supported by hands-on computational and workshop labs.
Interactive 3D models
- Sand casting mold - A two-part sand mold: the cope and drag flasks with their sand, the core, the pouring basin and gating system, and the casting they produce.
- Single-crystal turbine blade casting - Directional solidification of a turbine blade: a ceramic shell mold on a water-cooled chill plate is withdrawn from a radiant furnace. Grains grow up from the chill through the starter block, one survives the pigtail selector, and that single grain fills the root, platform, airfoil and shroud.
- Tube extrusion with a spider die - Hot extrusion of a tube: the ram pushes the billet through the container into the die, where four legs hold the mandrel. The metal splits round the legs, welds back together in the chamber behind them, and leaves as a tube with four seam welds.
- Turbine blade shape - a blade as a stack of airfoil sections.
