FIVE-AXIS MACHINING SUPPLEMENTFIVE-SUPPLEMENT
CAM & NC PROGRAMMING
keep it going. It also means we can carry
out lights-out machining. Depending on
the job it can run constantly for between
eight and 14 hours, without any manual
intervention.”
NX supports complex 5-axis machining
at Manthorpe Engineering
From small prismatics to rings and
casings up to 3.4 m in diameter,
Manthorpe Engineering specialises in the
machining of dif cult-to-manufacture,
performance-critical components.
It fabricates, machines, tests and
assembles high-integrity components from
a range of materials, including exotic
alloys.
Located near Derby, Manthorpe
Engineering is a Tier 1 supplier to the
aerospace, industrial, marine and power
generation industries, and employs 5-axis,
multi-tasking machine tools, programming
them using Siemens PLM’s (https://
is.gd/nadoko) NX software.
“What differentiates us as a company
is the complexity of the components that
we machine,” says Tom Pochciol,
business director at Manthorpe
Engineering. “They can be large and
awkward in shape. We might, for example,
be working on the engine casing for a jet
or the particularly tight tolerances of a
bearing system. A human hair is
approximately 60 microns in diameter and
we regularly have to achieve
measurement accuracy to ve microns.
Achieving tight positional tolerances is
even more challenging. We need a
CADCAM technology that’s both powerful
and exible.”
TTL (https://is.gd/wafi qu) supplied the
company with Siemens PLM NX,
customising post-processors, con guring
software and delivering user training for
the company. “It is very important to get
the right post-processors for each
machine and then ne-tune them,” says
Pochciol. “Our contacts at TTL have been
very helpful and continue to provide us
with support whenever we need it.”
Customers send both 3D and 2D
information to Manthorpe Engineering.
This kickstarts a collaborative process.
“A 3D model is a representation of a
perfect idea of what a product should be;
yet in the physical world there is
variability, so we need to draw on our
expertise and knowledge of the
customer’s requirements to understand
what tolerances are allowed,” Pochciol
comments.
The design evolves as Manthorpe
Engineering adds its expertise to improve
manufacturability and shorten timescales.
“One of the rst things we do using NX is
to make sure that we can optimise the
design for manufacture,” adds Steve Lee,
a manufacturing engineer at Manthorpe
Engineering. “Time on the machine is
money and if we can nd any areas of the
design that can be improved, we have a
Siemens NX is
supporting Manthorpe
Engineering
conversation with the
customer, interrogate the model in NX and
manipulate certain features, if necessary.
We can iterate with the customer very
quickly to ensure that the production
process is the most cost-effective and
time ef cient.”
And he adds: “We use information
gained from NX to apply times to each
toolpath operation. Even at a very early
stage, before we have won a contract, we
can gain a clear idea of how long a job will
take to complete and can let our
estimators in the sales department know.
Once we have actually won a job, we use
the information from NX to de ne the
manufacturing method and set up the
machining program to select the right
tools.”
On programming parts with complex
shapes, he says: “The components that
we receive frequently incorporate smooth,
owing lines involving very complex
geometry. It would, for example, be
impossible to accurately reproduce certain
irregular shapes without 3D capability and
the manufacturing control that it gives us.
“The CAM software I used previously
would not have been able to handle the
complexity of the parts we tackle. A key
bene t of NX is the ability to keep track
of, and graphically represent in 3D, the inprocess
state of a workpiece relative to
the raw material stock. This is critical for
effective mill-turning strategies. NX CAM
automatically generates an in-process
workpiece to provide seamless transfer of
workpiece con gurations between milling
and turning operations.
“The strength of NX is that it is very
easy to compare the model of the raw
material prior to machining with the
nished product. After the programming of
any toolpath, NX gives a visual
representation of the material that has
been removed and any that is left. This
means that we are constantly up to date
with the amount of metal the program
will remove and also the amount
remaining.”
Simulating the machining process prior
to cutting is key and NX delivers here,
too. “When we are working with a tricky
material like titanium at a diameter of
3.4 m, we cannot afford any mistakes
during machining, so we run a simulation
of the toolpath rst,” says Pochciol.
The integrated machine tool simulation
is driven by output from the NX postprocessor,
post-
rather than just toolpath data.
In a virtual environment, NX shows the
complete machine, plus xtures and
tools, as it runs through the movements
on the component. That allows both
planners and machinists to con rm that
there are no clashes, no cuts in the wrong
place and minimal waste material.
NX also supports CMM-based
inspection needs, too. Lee again:
“We provide the NX model to our CMM so
that we verify a product against that
model. The CMM will de ne the key
characteristics of the model and check
these in the physical product.”
Concludes Pochciol: “There is no way
we could create the shapes we now do
without NX. It is an enabling technology
for modelling and developing complex
methods of manufacture, and it allows us
to work in very close partnership with our
customers. We have strong ambitions for
the future and, along with the skill of our
engineers, NX is central to our business.”
Turbo-machinery design software &
hyperMILL combo now offered
Open Mind Technologies AG (https://
is.gd/gatuno) has entered into a
cooperative agreement with CFturbo to
provide a complete design-to-manufacture
work ow process to produce
turbomachines such as pumps,
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