On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 18:43:10 GMT, Evan Carew wrote:

Ron,

& yet, when that part comes out of the mold, it is essentially flyable.
With the aluminum CNC paradyme, you get predrilled holes in aluminum you
then have to bend, & thousands of rivet holes you have to debur. hours,
hours, & hours of deburring...

I think deburring isn't quite that much of a time hog. I've never heard an RV
or Murphy or Zenith builder complain about the time needed for deburring, while
I have heard a lot of whines about sanding from the composite crowd (but many of
those are building moldless composites, not molded). If deburring were that
much of an impact, outfits like Cessna, Piper, and Boeing would have come up
with an alternative 50 years ago.

Those rare times where I'm bashing something from aluminum, I just keep an old
battery-powered drill handy with a countersink chucked up. Drill the holes,
disassemble the part, go zzzz-zzzz-zzzz with the countersink, then start pulling
rivets.

I think your point is valid in a way, as a metal-airplane builder spends a lot
of time assembling the part with clecos, drilling it, disassembling it,
deburring it, priming it, RE-assembling it, then driving rivets. But, geeze,
4,000 RV completions. Obviously it isn't that much of a hassle.

Ron Wanttaja