Delcam’s Vortex speeds up the machining of Bloodhound car parts

Production needs to be fast too – because the first test runs of the car are timetabled for later this year. Many of the parts for Bloodhound are being machined at the AMRC (University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing). It's work that the centre says makes a change from the usual 95% it carries out for the aerospace industry. The front suspension sub-assembly has proved particularly challenging to produce (pictured above). Engineers thought it would be extremely difficult to machine because it included deep pockets with small internal corners. But the AMRC overcame the challenge easily by using the Vortex high efficiency area-clearance strategy in PowerMILL to rough out the pockets. As a result, the AMRC was able to produce the finished component within the tight time constraints demanded by the project. Matt Farnsworth, aero structures platform group leader at the AMRC, says: "Delcam allows us to be on the machine cutting a lot quicker than the alternative software solutions because we're able to reduce our programming times. "We also use on-machine verification with PowerINSPECT so, when we are getting near to finishing a part, we can probe the surfaces and machine adaptively, if required, to ensure that we get good geometrical tolerances."