Page 35 - MMI- Aug2022

Source: CGTech

User-friendliness wins the tool. Smoothing out spikes that you can sell to somebody
During the evaluation phase, in cutting force or chip load can else, consumables are direct cash
the engineering team at Cas- have a major effect on tool life, spend. If it takes £100 of carbide Castle has
tle worked with CGTech UK to but it is harder to quantify the to make a particular part and we everything
create a test case based on an benefit as you can’t tell until you can reduce that to £80, we are built up in
existing process involving both go and try it,” he adds. literally not spending £20. That’s VERICUT
turning and milling, which was “On one of the jobs we were ana- £20 that stays in our bank ac- already, and
because
provided to multiple software lyzing recently, we were looking count. Cycle time savings are soft CGTech has
vendors. As Yuile points out, “To at a histogram of chip load and money; they’re potential reve- done a real-
be honest, they all came back seeing that for maybe 5 percent nue, while consumables spend is ly good job
with broadly similar results for of the time it was twice as high hard money; it’s cash.” of making
cycle time reduction, but it was as the average load, telling us Force as us-
er-friendly
the usability that was the differ- that there were regular spikes Partners in progress as possible,
entiating factor for us. We have throughout the tool path. Now Castle has always been an early it helps
everything built up in VERICUT we have the ability to identify adopter of manufacturing tech- make the
already, and because CGTech has where these occur and slow the nology, and VERICUT has estab- benefits
done a really good job of making feed rate to level them out, reduc- lished itself as an essential part of of phys-
ics-based
Force as user-friendly as possi- ing tool wear and improving both the company’s digital workflow. optimization
ble, it helps make the benefits of tool life and process stability.” “We put a lot of effort into en- a lot more
physics-based optimization a lot suring our simulations are an ac- accessible.
more accessible.” Reducing consumables curate representation of the real
He says: “It is exciting, the idea spend process, as the benefits VERICUT
that we can go through our Force has been in use at Castle for delivers are massive, both as a
existing workflow, take a job about a year, and Yuile is keen to safety net and as an improve-
that we have proven as a sta- highlight one of the often-over- ment tool. All of our program-
ble process, and then say, ‘Right looked benefits—consumables ming is done offline, and being
VERICUT, analyze this for me spend. He says: “Carbide cutting able to accelerate the proving out
and tell me where there’s room tools are a major expenditure for of new jobs by doing most of it
for improvement’.” us. When we are costing a job, virtually saves a huge amount of
“The interesting thing is because the two key variables are how production downtime, as well as
we are working with a lot of dif- long it is going to take on the ma- derisks the entire process.”
ficult-to-machine materials, it’s chine and how much we are go- “We trust VERICUT,” Yuile con-
not always about cycle time. It ing to consume in carbide. Any cludes, “and that trust comes from
sounds counterintuitive, as typ- reduction in cycle time Force can experience. When manufacturing
ically, the main benefit of opti- deliver is good, but so is any im- high-value components for such
mization is the opportunity to provement in tool life.” critical applications, we need to
speed things up, but sometimes “Although cycle time is a mon- have confidence that we’re using
it’s also about slowing things etary saving in the sense that the very best tools for the job, and
down to reduce peak loading on you free up machine capacity VERICUT delivers.”

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