October 2010 Industry News
VoluMill™ Dramatically Reduces Cycle Times and Increases Tool Life
Celeritive Technologies, Inc. has signed an agreement with Geometric, a leader in developing advanced manufacturing software, to offer the ultra-high-performance machining software program VoluMill™ as an option for its leading solid-based CNC programming solution CAMWorks®.
VoluMill toolpaths dynamically manage material removal rates to keep an even and user-controllable load on the cutting tool. Ideal machining conditions are established and maintained throughout the program for any combination of part geometry, material, machine, and cutting tool. Machine tools are fed commands that enable them to operate at peak efficiency levels, enabling the use of machining parameters that both reduce cycle times and extend cutting tool life.
“The combination of VoluMill and CAMWorks will allow our customers to fully leverage solids technology and provide better performance on the shop floor,” said Sunil Palrecha, Geometric’s Director of Product Marketing and Sales, who added, “We expect the addition of VoluMill to give us a sizable competitive advantage in the solids market segment.”
Lawrence Lynott, Celeritive Technologies’ vice president of sales, said, “This agreement will give VoluMill a strong partnership in the solids market segment and broaden its exposure and use in Europe and Asia.
The Volumill technology has already migrated north. Optima Manufacturing is located in Alberta, Canada. Ninety percent of the company’s business is machining components for the energy industry. But it also services customers in the aerospace, environmental control, agriculture, and telecommunications sectors by providing process design services, extremely close tolerance machining, and precision assembly.
Jonathan Wang, Optima’s CNC programming supervisor, is responsible for adding productivity to the company’s commitment to quality. Having been introduced to the VoluMill™ toolpath engine by a colleague more than a year ago, he has put it to good use on more than 100 components for the oil and gas industry. Most of these are machined from nickel-based and other difficult-to-cut materials.
Wang’s group uses a CAM system that uses the traditional parallel offset method to generate toolpaths. Optima recently purchased VoluMill to improve productivity with simplified programming, shorter cycle times, and extended tool life.
“Our four programmers are very busy,” said Wang. “We can’t afford to spend a lot of time tweaking a part program. We estimate that the time to generate a part program using our CAM system’s toolpath engine took 10 times longer than it does now with VoluMill. Even then, we wouldn’t get the advantage of VoluMill’s controlled and consistent material removal rate.
“One major area of improvement is the milling of inside radii on pockets and contours,” said Wang. “Traditional toolpaths would simply plunge the cutter into these corners, placing very high loads on the tool and spindle, often causing deflection and accuracy issues. VoluMill’s approach generates all motions in a sweeping pattern with a smaller cutter to mill these radii. As a result, VoluMill toolpaths remove the material much faster while putting far less stress on the cutter and machine.”
Still, management had to be convinced to invest in this revolutionary technology, so comparisons were performed on actual production parts for the energy industry. One was machined from Inconel® 718 using a 3/8" coated carbide end mill mounted in a Haimer® 40-taper shrink-fit holder for rigidity. Both toolpaths were run at 1,000 RPM, but that’s where the similarity ended.
According to Wang, the Inconel part took 40 minutes to rough with a 0.125 depth of cut using a traditional toolpath. Using a VoluMill toolpath, Optima was able to reduce roughing time to 17 minutes using the same size end mill and RPM, but a 0.5 depth of cut.
“Not only is the cycle time dramatically shorter, but the extended tool life is impressive,” said Wang. “By cutting 1/2" deep, we were able to utilize the full length of the flute of our end mill instead of concentrating the wear pattern at the corner, making the tool useless for the next part.”
Another comparison was performed on an energy industry component machined from titanium 6Al4V using 1/2" diameter coated carbide end mills. Wang said the titanium part took 18 minutes to rough at 950 RPM, using a 0.08 axial depth of cut and a 0.2 radial depth of cut with the traditional toolpath. The VoluMill toolpath reduced roughing time to 11 minutes using the same size end mill and RPM, but with a 0.5 axial depth of cut and a 0.025 radial depth of cut.
According to Wang, when he factors in the cycle time reductions and improvements in tool life, Optima saved $100 per part using VoluMill toolpaths on the Inconel component and another $70 per part on the titanium piece. He estimates VoluMill paid for itself in less than a month.
“Management was easily convinced to purchase our first VoluMill license with such a quick return on their investment,” said Wang. “Now we have two workstations loaded with VoluMill, and ultimately, all of our programmers will have their own version rather than competing with each other for it.”
Wang also reports an improvement in Optima’s on-time delivery results. In addition to shorter cycle times, with improved tool life, operators spend less time changing tools and there are fewer incidents of having to re-run a job due to a tool failure. As a result, the machines are not only running faster, but with less interruption.
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Volumill
Bertsche Machining Center Boosts Hitco Floor Beam Production By 400%
To accomplish the complex manufacturing problems of machining airplane trim and floor beams to the requisite tolerances and to meet the required production rates, HITCO has turned to Bertsche to develop a complex 5-axis profile beam milling machine for this purpose. Bertsche has a long history designing and building composite milling and drilling machines beginning with the 777 program, the first commercial airplane to use CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastic) floor beams.
Hitco Carbon Composites was selected as one of the suppliers to Boeing's 787 CFRP floor beam program. The company is one of a handful of manufacturers worldwide that has the capability of manufacturing complex (laid up) CFRP aerospace structural parts and final machining the parts for direct delivery to “point of use”. Specific to the manufacture of floor beams, the process entails design and construction of detailed layup tools, using CNC controlled tape laying machines to form the structures that are then cured in large autoclaves. The cured floor beam profiles are sawed, edge routed, cut to length, and drilled. They are manufactured as ship sets in a demand driven on-off manufacturing environment, each ship set corresponding to an airplane order.
Over the course of several months, the project requirements were fully defined allowing Bertsche to then incorporate the many desired features into one fully automatic machining system. The resultant full 5 axis machine features automated part setup, part program control of all workholding fixtures, a wave milling feature, and 100% part inspection. The complex workholding fixtures can clamp beams of varying web width, varying flange length, and programmable web thickness datum surfaces. The fixtures themselves are repositionable so that they can be prepositioned as part of an automated CNC setup program as well as moved out of the way during machining operations. This provides better access to certain areas of the floor beam for cutting and drilling operations. The fixtures are individually controlled but also operate as coordinated groups that open and close, lift and retract and reposition in synchronous fashion for part loading sequences, when machining or measuring parts.
The work holding fixtures are designed to hold U, H, J cross sectional beams from 3.0 inches in width to 12.0 inches in width and can adjust for gage reduction (web ply thinning for weight reduction). The fixtures automatically adjust to varying web and flange thickness.
For added flexibility, the workholding fixtures are removable from the supporting base. New, different style fixtures can be attached to the support allowing the machine to be reconfigured for holding different style parts.
To enhance part positioning and flow, the machine incorporated. large vacuum tools that can be loaded into the machine and supported by the same flexible clamping style workholding fixtures. Parts are now manufactured with either vacuum or mechanical clamping means as the process dictates.
Parts are machined dry. Dry machining is the preferred method by the airplane manufacturers to avoid composite material swelling due to coolant absorption by material exposed from cutting. Coolants, especially oil base coolants can interact with the composite material causing the material to swell and the formation of residue that then must be cleaned after part machining. Dry machining also has an advantage because dust containment and removal is an easier problem to solve than preventing dust sludge buildup when the plastic material and cutting fluids form a sludge that adheres to every crevice and nook in the machine.
For dust containment all machining is done in a fully enclosed machining compartment with integral dust collection hoods that capture air borne dust, directing it out of the machine into a dust filtration system. Composite slugs, chards and similar material are swept into a debris collection chute with a debris pusher device as part of an automatic cleanup cycle. A set of large HEPA filters clean the air to a safe level and a dust collection drum makes for easy machine cleanup and dust disposal.
The thermal coefficient of expansion CFRP material is almost zero while the machine tool expansion is primarily governed by the coefficient of expansion of steel. Due to the long length of the parts manufactured, this difference becomes significant enough to adversely impact the hole location accuracy of features machined into the part. To insure manufacture of consistent length beams, thermal length compensation is used to adjust for length variation of the part based on the part and machine temperature.
To verify that parts are machined to tolerance and the end user’s desire to measure the parts for dimensional accuracy in the same state in which they were machined, parts are 100% feature inspected in the machine. The inspection probe is used to verify the position of fixtures, datum surfaces of the fixture, and dimensional inspection data for all drilled and milled features. The machine is also equipped with a calibration sphere that allows the machine to quickly check itself for any position deviation and the inspection probe calibration software is used to insure 100% reliability of collected inspection data.
Now in full production, the machine drills, mills, and saws complete floor beams on all sides in a single setup. The finish machined product is inspected using a full function metrology software package integral to the HMI front end PC. Parts are inspected for dimensional accuracy and statistical data are collected with complete tracking history created for each manufactured part.
The entire floor beam machining system is housed in a specially built facility that is temperature regulated. Engineering and manufacturing offices surround the machine, giving manufacturing engineers constant oversight of complete operations and allowing them to stay fully involved at all times with the manufacturing process.
While current production rates are already four times faster than by previous methods, continued program optimization and process improvements are being implemented by Hitco with the expectation that floor beam manufacturing times will be reduced by at least another 50% in the future.
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Bertsche
New Grade Improves Performance Even in Extremely Tough Machining
Sandvik Coromant has announced its GC1040, a new milling grade that is available as of October 1, 2010. The grade has been designed to perform securely with consistently sharp cutting edges, low forces and slow wear, even in the extremely tough machining of austenitic stainless and duplex materials.
As the Sandvik Coromant first-choice recommendation for shoulder milling with small diameters in fine to medium roughing, GC1040 is ultimately secure in unstable conditions and provides the high levels of reliability needed for unmanned production.
Grade GC1040 will be available for a broad range of Sandvik Coromant CoroMill cutters.
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Sandvik
FARO Technologies, Inc., has introduced the new FARO Laser Scanner Focus3D, a revolutionary, high-performance 3D laser scanner for detailed measurement and documentation with intuitive touch screen control that makes it as easy to operate as a digital camera. It is four times lighter and five times smaller than its predecessor and is the smallest and lightest laser scanner ever built.
Focus3D uses laser technology to produce incredibly detailed three-dimensional images of complex environments and geometries in only a few minutes. The resulting image is an assembly of millions of 3D measurement points in color which provides an exact digital reproduction of existing conditions.
The new FARO Laser Scanner Focus3D is suitable for documentation of large environments, quality control of components and reverse engineering. Thanks to its millimeter-accuracy and its 976,000 measurement points/second, the Focus3D offers an efficient and precise method for measurement and three-dimensional documentation of building construction, excavation volumes, façade and structural deformations, crime scenes, accident sites, product geometry, factories, process plants, and more.
The Focus3D is entirely self-contained, meaning no additional devices, cables or laptop are needed. With its dimensions of 9.5 x 8 x 4 in. and a weight of 11lbs, the Focus3D is so compact and mobile that users can always take it with them, wherever they go.
Focus3D deploys an integrated color camera with automatic and parallax free color overlay for photo-realistic 3D scans. Its integrated lithium-ion high-performance battery provides up to five hours of battery life and can be charged during operation. Furthermore, all scans are stored on a SD card enabling easy and secure data transfer to a computer.
The FARO Focus3D is compatible with many common software applications. The flexible interfaces of SCENE, the scan processing software included with the Focus3D, enable connection to AutoCAD as well as many other CAD applications such as Rhino, Microstation, Nemetschek and ArchiCAD.
“With the revolutionary Focus3D, FARO provides architects, civil engineers and plant designers with an efficient tool for rapid, seamless and precise documentation of the current status of buildings, plants and construction sites of every kind. The Focus3D offers advanced functionality through a simple user interface and expands the user base beyond the expert, moving phase shift laser scanning across the technology chasm”, stated Jay Freeland, FARO’s Chief Executive Officer
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FARO
Kennametal Interactive Catalog App Now Available on iTunes®
While economic cycles may move slowly, the pace of social media access to valuable industrial and high-tech resources is quickening. Kennametal, a leader in tooling, engineered components, and advanced materials for the world’s manufacturing and mining industries, is among the pioneers in this effort.
Kennametal has debuted an interactive catalog app for the iPad® platform. Users can conveniently download any and all of Kennametal’s numerous product catalogs and review products and specifications, request quotes, view engineering drawings or videos, or contact technical support for more information.
Now this app is available for download through iTunes® at no cost. “Whether it’s for accessing product information, seeking expert help, or just communing with fellow users and fans, we want to be sure people are accessing the Kennametal information they want in the way they want to get to it,” says Jennifer Altimore, site content manager at Kennametal. “Estimates of iTunes® users number in the hundreds of millions, and they’re downloading an ever-growing range of content. It’s game-changing when you realize Kennametal is among the first to recognize that engineers, machinists, and other experts who want the latest and most exact technical information also watch videos and listen to music .”
While social media efforts are still relatively recent at the company, Kennametal groups have already formed on Facebook® and LinkedIn® (search Kennametal Inc. on both), followers are following Twitter® feeds (@Kennametal_Inc), and a video library is growing on YouTube® (search Kennametal Solutions). “We’ll continue to experiment a lot, and as the audience grows, we’ll be measuring the response and engaging the audience with the resources they want,” Altimore adds.
iTunes® users can simply search Kennametal in the iTunes Store to download the app.
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Kennametal
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