LEAD FEATURE A PLACE OF LEARNING
during the production process.
Claudius Peters looked at the design of its cast iron
clinker cooling pans, which have to move 13,000
tonnes/day – clinker is limestone and clay, ground and
then heated to 1,450 °C. To be used in the next stage of
the process, it must be cooled to room temperature as it
is held in the pans, of which there are 50-60 per clinker
cooling system. The company used generative design to
originate a new pan design that employed the least
amount of material possible, reducing stored heat and
speeding cooling. The outcome was an organic design
some 40% lighter that also offered higher performance
than its best existing design. But it was not suited to
subtractive manufacture, only additive.
However, the company’s engineers nally translated
this into a design that could be made from laser-cut
plates welded together. This design was 25% lighter,
quicker to make, less expensive by €100/pan, reduced
shipping costs, avoided the import of cast pans from
Turkey or India (where coal is used to generate energy
used in the casting process) and allowed local
manufacture. For its customers, the company’s
equipment saves €1m/year versus competitor offerings
and that translates to the removal of 12,000 vehicles
from the road, Ramji added, concluding: “Generative
design is practical for JPL and Claudius Peters, and we
are committed to making it practical for each of you.”
(Claudius Peters full story: https://is.gd/ojihep.)
A more immediately relevant and highly innovative
application of generative design, this time combined with
plastic AM, was highlighted at the two-day event.
Autodesk has worked with Matsuura Machinery (https://
is.gd/voxovu) to produce a plastic xture suitable for
holding an aluminium part during machining on a
Matsuura 5-axis machining centre. The drive for this
solution was a time-based one; the turnaround time for
the parts would not tolerate the lead time for the design
and manufacture of traditional metal xturing. Matsuura,
of course, is also a UK agent for HP AM machines, so
has the technology to produce such a plastic xture.
The constraints for the Fusion 360-based generative
design process took in xture-table location/bolt holes,
xture-billet location/bolt holes, machining forces (online
calculators are available) and access to all sides of the
part in support of 5-axis machining of all ve sides of the
part. There are no threads in the xture, only bolt holes,
while datum location surfaces are machined after 3D
printing. In fact, material and machining process
constraints were also part of the mix to compare
manufacturing routes, with AM/Nylon chosen for its
speed of manufacture, with up to two xtures made
automatically, overnight. It is also much lighter than a
metal xture, so handling is easier, while most of the
material can be recycled. Underlines Matsuura
Machinery marketing executive Ian Mitchie: “Sometimes
you have to wait weeks for workholding to be made; now
we can cut those weeks down to hours; down to hours.”
(Videos: https://is.gd/uhiwiy, https://is.gd/desija, https://
is.gd/ularev.)
Autodesk technical sales specialist Kevin Shaw, who
was involved with this project, also revealed that a
company making 300 metal xtures/year is looking to
boost that to 600 this year by adopting this generative
design and plastic AM approach.
Moving more fully into the manufacturing environment,
Autodesk has both desktop and cloud-hosted
manufacturing software, more particularly CAM. Its
desktop offerings take in PowerMill, Feature CAM and
Partmaker. In the cloud, it has Fusion 360, which has a
CAM capability. Fusion 360 does not have much traction
here in the UK, but the offering of ‘entitlement’ to
subscribers of non-cloud-hosted software, including
PowerMill, should see that change. What’s more, Fusion
360 itself has been given more capability. It now
features CAM manufacturing extensions available
through exible activation, providing access only when
required. Also, newly developed cost insights have been
integrated for generative design, powered by aPriori.
These will, for the rst time ever, allow users to view
manufacturing cost estimates for every design result in a
generative study. Two more manufacturing constraints
have been added to the generative design workspace –
die-casting, with 2.5-axis milling to follow soon (full
details: https://is.gd/ijuyuk.)
Fusion 360 product manager Steve Hooper explains
that elements of PowerMill, FeatureCAM, PowerInpect
and Netfabb have been incorporated within Fusion 360,
Above:
Autodesk’s
Kevin Shaw
holds the
3D-printed
plastic fi xture
used to support
5-axis
machining of a
metal
component,
below
www.machinery.co.uk @MachineryTweets August 2019 11
/ojihep.)
/uhiwiy
/desija
/ijuyuk.)
/www.machinery.co.uk