Mission critical manufacturing

Quick managing director Budd Boulton says machining the company's parts using Alphacam integrated CADCAM software (024 7671 3434) enables it to react quickly when a new model helicopter comes on to the market. "We buy one of the very first and, before it has even been seen in the trade magazines, Alphacam gives us the ability to produce a range of upgrade components for it." Founded in 1982 to manufacture the UK's first commercially available radio controlled model helicopter kits from aluminium, steel and carbon fibre, Quick enjoyed 15 years of growth until the onset of cheap, plastic helicopters from China. "Our models were high precision, but cost around £1,000, compared to about £200 for the Chinese models. We decided to specialise in producing high precision upgrade components for the plastic helicopters, reverse engineering them to give them much better performance," Mr Boulton offers. He says Alphacam – part of the Planit Group – is of the utmost importance to the company and is key to success in getting to market first with a new product. "Thanks to Alphacam, we're at the top of our tree." Image: Providing parts for the upgrading model helicopters is Quick's focus The drawback with the standard plastic components on the cheap helicopters, says Mr Boulton, is that there is too much flex in the control system. "If you have a 90° bell crank that's transferring a load from the servo motor to the rotor head, you can be putting five to ten kilos of torque through it. Plastic ones tend to flex, so the way the helicopter flies can be improved considerably by making those components more rigid." Quick UK's range of around 300 aluminium and carbon fibre components effectively brings much greater precision to the way the helicopters fly. They also bring more longevity, particularly in the transmission systems, and therefore more overall reliability. "Most components on a helicopter are mission critical, in that, if any one of them fails, the helicopter could crash. By using Alphacam, we've built a reputation for quality components, and people come to us to upgrade their models as a matter of course. As with any hobby, enthusiasts continue to develop it by spending £10, £20 or £30 a month on upgrading components to make their helicopter fly better." Although there are something like one million model helicopters around the world at any one time, Quick UK is the only UK company doing what it does and one of only a handful globally. Operating from 2,500 ft2 premises in Pewsey, Wiltshire, with just five employees, Quick manufactures its components on five CNC machining centres, all driven by Alphacam. Two are vertical Dugards, one with a 1,000 mm bed and one with a 600 mm bed, and three Austrian Emco multi-axis turning centres with driven tooling and Y-axis turrets that are used for the more complex components. As Quick only has two operators, Mr Boulton says it is important that Alphacam can drive all their machines. "Using only one piece of software means the operators have become very proficient with it, and we don't have to swap software between different machines. This is particularly valuable on the milling machines, because many of our components are very small. Typically, we may machine around 400 at a time, and the pocketing feature on Alphacam gives us the ability to effectively produce the machine code for one, and then we populate the whole sheet with multiple items, which is obviously very much quicker for us. Image: Here's one I stripped down earlier - Quick's replacement parts can now be fitted "On the turning centres, we have three machines with very similar capabilities and it is so convenient being able to choose any one to do a production run. It means we don't have just one machine that produces a particular component. We can very quickly put it on to any one of the three, so we can usually keep all three machines running, with very little downtime." The speed with which Alphacam produces programs is also important. "Generally, we can take a new component from the design stage to producing the prototype within 24 hours and, if all's well with it, it goes into production immediately, which is absolutely vital, as is generating the toolpath offline. "What we do and how we've been successful is ultimately as a result of selecting Alphacam. I looked at many systems before selecting it, but I made the best choice and, if I had my time over again, I would select Alphacam again." When GE Precision Engineering (GEPE) opened its doors for business a little over four years ago, like most start-ups the Northampton-based company purchased equipment within its budget constraints. The acquisitions included a number of second-hand machine tools and low end CAM software to program its parts. But you get what you pay for, as founder and managing director Garry Edwards acknowledges. Mr Edwards left his post at Ilmor to set up GEPE to service the motorsport industry and, to work in this industry, high specification machine tools, CAM software and highly qualified and experienced staff are prerequisites. Image: GEPE uses Open Mind to program 5-axis machined parts like this To meet such demands, Mr Edwards invited three highly skilled ex-colleagues to join the company as directors and, when it was financially feasible, the company invested in 5-axis machine tools. In the four years of trading, this has included a DMG DMU50 (01582 570661), a seven pallet MikronUCP600 (024 7653 8666), a Hardinge XR60-5AX (0116 286 9900) and Doosan turning centres, with driven tooling (Mills CNC, 01926 736736). However, the most important purchase for the 17 employee business has been CAM software from Open Mind Technologies (01869 290003). As Mr Edwards highlights: "The hyperMILL package from Open Mind is undoubtedly the best decision I have made for my business. Four years ago, we initially acquired a CAM system based on cost and, even during the training period, I knew it wasn't capable of meeting our needs. Nine months later, we bought our first seat of hyperMILL. I have been trained on all CAM systems and spent many years competently using CAM systems from all manufacturers. My vast experience has seen me actually support some CAM vendors. So, when I say that Open Mind is the best available package, I am speaking from years of experience with all CAM systems." The first seat of hyperMILL arrived in April 2009, with additional seats following in June 2009 and September 2010. The quality of components immediately improved, with technical director Scott Bredda explaining: "We have machined parts with hyperMILL and we have seen some customers' machine the exact same parts with alternate CAM packages; there is no comparison in quality. The toolpaths of hyperMILL drastically improve the surface finishes and overall component quality, while the programming times are significantly reduced." Image: This Norton cylinder head is another of GEPE's efforts, machined with the help of Open Mind Box item CADCAM product developments in brief [] Delcam (0121 766 5544) has introduced a new data repair module for its FeatureCAM feature-based CAM system. The module, which is based on functionality from Delcam's PowerSHAPE CAD software, will allow FeatureCAM users to repair poor-quality CAD models from a wide range of design software. Once repaired, the models will be able to take full advantage of the automated programming provided by FeatureCAM. Image: Is there a doctor in the house? FeatureCAM now has a new data repair feature, Solid Doctor [] Vericut 7.1 (CGTech, 01273 773538) features significant enhancements to reduce the time required for manufacturing engineers to easily develop, analyse, inspect and document the CNC programming and machining process. Along with proactively adding new features, CGTech developers and engineers focused on addressing hundreds of customer-driven enhancements. Version 7.1 contains over 400 customer requests. Image: CGTech's STEP milling tool import [] Mastercam Swiss Expert (4D Engineering, 01285 650111) is CNC Software's new sliding-head machine CADCAM software, which results from the company's acquisition of Swiss machining software SylvieXpert. The software was developed in Switzerland for sliding-head machines by experts in the Jura region where this type of machine was invented. Image: Swiss Expert from Mastercam is a sliding-head focused CADCAM package First published in Machinery, March 2011