JW Kane Precision Engineering
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Success Story Productivity Takes Off for Irish Subcontractor When JW Kane Precision Engineering Ltd invested in new staff and new machine tools that included DMG and Unisign 5-axis machining centres, the tier 1 aerospace supplier wanted to optimise its investment and exploit its... ...5-axis machining capability with a suitable CAM vendor. The extensive experience of the CAD/CAM staff at JW Kane and the type of complex aerospace parts produced led to a natural selection of OPEN MIND Techno logies yperMILL CAM software. h ® When the Portadown, Northern Ireland based company employed Ryan McClure as the Engineering Team Leader, his primary remit was to develop the company’s 5-axis machining capability and the CAM software for producing such parts. At the time of Ryan’s employment, the SC21 Bronze awarded company already had a seat of hyperMILL and a seat of a competitors software that were not being fully utilised. As Mr McClure recalls: “When I arrived at JW Kane the company was using a number of CAM packages and with my extensive experience of most CAM packages, it was my position to maximise the company’s 5-axis potential. At the time I had little experience with yperMILL h but its ease of use and intuitive and time saving features now see 95% of our parts programmed with yperMILL .” h ® About JW Kane Precision Engineering Kane Precision Engineering offer a fully integrated solution for all CNC Milling requirements. They are specialize in serv ing the Aerospace Industry. The Kane “Value Chain” from enquiry to product delivery is a proven methodology achieving world class delivery, quality and customer service expectations at competitive prices. > www.kaneprecisionengineering.com/ © OPEN MIND Technologies AG. Machining highly complex components for customers such as Bombardier, Airbus, Thales and additional globally renowned aerospace manufacturers, impeccable component quality, time and price pressure are all factors that the 43 employee company has to overcome. To this end, yperMILL has h proven a resounding success by reducing programming times and cycle times by over 50% on most components. As Mr McClure continues: “yperMILL has a number of h features that are not provided by alternate CAM suppliers, and it is these features that have made a considerable difference to our productivity levels.” ® Stock Model and Linking Cycle features Two yperMILL features that have made h a contribution is the Stock Model and the Link Cycle features that have recently ing saved 51% on an airframe structure part for Bombardier. Using a Heidenhain 3-axis control, the component previously had a stage 1 operation time of 10 minutes with a second stage cycle time of 42 minutes. By utilising h yperMILL , this 52 minute time was reduced to 28 minutes with stage one and two respectively taking 8 and 20 minutes to machine. ® As Mr McClure states: “I attribute this time saving to the ability of the software to calculate the ‘Rest’ material or residual stock during roughing and to only cut exactly where the ‘Rest’ material is with consecu tive cutters

“hyperMILL has a number of features that are not provided by alternate CAM suppliers.” ® Ryan McClure, Engineering Team Leader software is 8 hours and an additional 4 hours for the opposite hand, OPEN MIND enables us to program the same parts in less than 5 hours. The mirrored part then takes anything from 10 to 30 minutes. This makes a mockery of other software that cannot mirror toolpaths, especially when it comes to multi axis parts that can be mirrored automatically and then the tool paths edited independently of the parent geometry.” “The linking of toolpaths within the work area...

I tend to look at it from another perspective, we are really in the business of making swarf at the most economical rate that we can, aerospace parts are generally machined from solid billets with up to 75% of the billet being machined away, so we must be in the business of making the swarf as fast as we can and then finishing the part to remarkable quality levels. We are testing the hyperMILL MAXX Machining roughing module with different components to see what the results are, it requires a change in mentality and thought process that yes you can ‘Take that much off’. With one 6 by 4 inch...