Exotic Propellers:

Casting pattern and machining of 24 inch diameter thruster.

These thrusters represent a recent design to production project which involved the complete solid model creation from an ancient blueprint (including complex 3T-T/3 blade/hub fillets), design synthesis of a match plate casting pattern with appropriate shrink factor and complex parting surfaces with draft, complete CNC machining of the pattern, and complete CNC machining of a 4 piece ship set from nickel aluminum bronze alloy including hand finishing of blade surfaces to a 32 microinch finish..

Precision machining of propulsion components for U.S. Navy submarines. 

These components are machined from nickel aluminum bronze castings. They feature a complex 3D hydrodynamic surface which is meticulously hand finished after machining. Unfortunately, we can't show a picture of these spectacular pieces because they are classified!

Precision machining of exotic geometry prototype propellers; NMRS project for Lockheed Marine Systems.

These exotic counter-rotating propeller sets were machined from 6061-T6 plate aluminum which was UT inspected prior to machining. Each billet started out approximately 17 inches in diameter and 7 inches thick, weighing some 135 lbs. The finished propellers weighed about 5 lbs. Although a casual examination of the geometry would lead one to believe that a 5 axis machine tool would be necessary to cut these parts, careful and creative machining, positioning, and fixturing allowed us to use our normal 3 axis VMC. One of our specialties at Kinetic Research is utilizing creative techniques to "finesse" our equipment into producing surprisingly complex shapes such as these. These parts required meticulous hand finishing to a virtual mirror finish, and then a hard anodize coating for corrosion resistance.

For these parts, the customer supplied us with a fairly crude wire frame IGES file defining contours on the blade surfaces. They also provided a drawing that detailed the hub and keyways. We synthesized the surfaces using Smartcam Freeform Machining surface generating tools, and developed machining toolpaths in both Smartcam and Generative Machining.

Precision machining of ducted thrusters; Rainbarrel project for Northrup Grumman. 

Whoops, we forgot to get a photo before we shipped a set of two of these thrusters, so we thought you would be interested in seeing a rendered image from the solid model we created in SDRC Ideas, our CAD modeler. These thrusters were machined from 20 by 20 by 4 inches thick 6061-T6 plate aluminum, hand finished, and anodized.