Application of composite materials for lightweight and smart structures design of high performance milling machines

The ever growing competition on the international markets pushes manufacturers towards shorter design cycles and decreasing manufacturing times and costs for their products. This trend generates a demand for smart, flexible and faster machining systems, easy to set up and configure, which are able to drastically reduce machining time, while improving the final accuracy. Machine Tools (MT) axis acceleration 2 to 3 times higher than conventional ones together with machining accuracy in the sub-micron range (considering a workpiece size in the macro-domain, e.g.1000 mm!) will be the most probable targets of the new generation of machining systems inside manufacturing shops. Strong mass reduction of mobile machine parts together with the increasing of their stiffness and damping to get excellent static, dynamic and thermal stability of the structures are then becoming a “must”, to ensure a technological and cost-effective achievement of such an ambitious goal. Typical examples of machine structures are the mobile parts of milling machines, grinding machines, laser cutting machines, coordinates measuring machines, etc. The introduction of composite materials in this new industrial market will surely bring a great advances in term of dynamic performances and will represent a new challenge for design engineers and huge opportunities for the composite manufacturers. Conventional materials for building MT are cast iron, welded steel and, in some cases, aluminium-alloys. Although these materials represent a very consolidated technology for MT engineers, the need to ensure such high performances requires the investigation of a new class of materials with improved inherent properties in terms of specific stiffness and structural