This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at Rutinas de inspección de pieza programadas en un entorno CAM

The supplier of parts for Sikorsky, Alp Aviation, shows us how to do it relying on Renishaw

Piece inspection routines on a CAM environment

Drafting MU17/03/2009

March 17, 2009

Alp Aviation production engineers are responsible for every detail of the piece of a customer from the beginning until the end. Alp recognizes the importance of using flexible and efficient production techniques. One of the most important developments recently is the introduction of software Productivity + of Renishaw, allowing Alp program and simulate routines of inspection in a CAM environment, for the inspection of piece of Renishaw probes installed in 50 centres of machining the company has.

"Alp should become a centre of expertise, and the key to achieve this is the communication and the relationships between my employees," says Şenay İdil, director-general, how has created the perfect culture among its staff to control production processes. By talking to the engineers it is clear that they share the same enthusiasm to achieve the best results. "We analyze the entire production process cycle time and we were able to reduce the time of adjustment in some cases up to 50 %" said Cenk Akin, responsible for Engineering Department. "Software Productivity + and inspection of piece of Renishaw probes have made this possible." The benefits include not only saving in time and costs; We cannot rely entirely on the production process, given that we have removed the possibility of human error. "The repeatability of the process has improved, we have reached a higher level of quality using probes with less than a micron repeatability."

Mounting piece.

The engineering of the production process

When the manufacture of a new piece starts a process engineer is assigned to this piece, and is responsible for all the processes of the production cycle. The client sends the file CAD engineer and decides a machining process, including the selection of machining tools, using a CAM system of Unigraphics. The CNC program that generates the CAM is loaded into the software Productivity + of Renishaw, where the engineer adds inspection cycles. This final program is sent to the corresponding machine by means of a DNC system and machines a piece of proof before the commencement of its mass production.

"The benefits not only include savings in time and costs;" "we cannot trust completely the production process, given that we have removed the possibility of human error"

Software Productivity + ™ of Renishaw.

Productivity + reduces time and costs

Software Productivity + was acquired in July 2007 with the aim of reducing the time of development of the process, the working environment of Alp is highly automated so it was not considered acceptable to manually schedule the inspection routines. Productivity + is based on a graphical environment that allows a 'friendly' programming and easy to use. Alp engineers simply use CAD model characteristics to control, or defined parameters from the Windows of dialogue to define the inspection program. When it is complete, you select the desired post-processor and the CNC program generates automatically, ready to be sent directly to the machine.

For greater security, inspection routines can be graphically simulated in software, correcting errors before it reaches the program to the machine. Cenk Akin, responsible for engineering, discusses the key factors of benefit for Alp, "Productivity + facilitates inspection routines checking before sending them to the machine." "If you are running the machine to check processes rather than to produce pieces are losing money".

Workshop of machines.

Probes for adjustment of piece and testing cycle

Productivity + has been acquired not long ago, but Alp has used the inspection of piece of Renishaw probes for many years, all new machines are requested from factory with such probes. Engineers can remember the difficulties which were before you start to use the Renishaw probes in Alp.

Now operators use simple systems of mooring and programmed the machine that you use the probe and calculate the zero exact piece. The probe is used also as process control, for example, each piece is checked before the finish machining and once it is inspect the critical points of the workpiece in the machine itself. The cycle time, to eliminate the manual setting and the time of inspection in a three-dimensional machine, has been reduced by up to 50%.

Another important feature is that using the inspection of the probe routines can automatically update the zero part of the machine.

The objective of reducing in Alp setting times is particularly important, since mechanized pieces have many variations and have a great deal of flexibility. Some sets of pieces can be mecanizing over a year, but some machines change series 2 or 3 times a day with only a few pieces for each series. It is therefore particularly striking that Alp is about achieving near-zero setting times, using pallet changing systems to allow operators load parts while the previous piece is being machined, and by part inspection probes to calculate the zero piece in seconds.