New support role at SGS Carbide Tool (UK) to deliver customer benefits

Bringing a wealth of machining knowledge and experience gained in the aerospace and heavy engineering industry sectors, he is trained in Catia, Siemens NX and Delcam CAD/CAM software and is able to provide full production NC programming support, remotely or onsite at a customer's facilities, in any one of these advanced software systems. He will apply the cutting strategies to the supplied solid CAD model to create an efficient NC code cutting tool path file. Explains Mr Crane: "My goal is to receive a drawing or solid CAD model, apply best manufacturing practices and return a complete NC program that any of the customers' staff can work with, in a familiar format. Ideally, this will include a list of cutting tools, set-up sheets for each operation, and so on. In fact, whatever the customer requests in a format that suits their needs." In addition, although fixturing is often limited to that already being used by the customer, if he believes there is a better method, he will suggest it to the customer, recommending process improvements as part of the SGS total service. As well as the CADCAM service, time study support for the area sales engineers will be offered, with cycle times taken from the software providing an accuracy to better than 95%, it is claimed. Having completed a four year formal apprenticeship programme with BAe (BAE Systems), Mr Crane gained his HNC in mechanical engineering. His training programme included a year covering the lifecycle of an aircraft, with the following three years concentrating on each vital stage of the aerospace business, from design to manufacture and on to assembly and customer support. At the end of his apprenticeship, he joined the company's manufacturing engineering team, having enjoyed the six months spent as an NC programmer during his training. He spent the next 19 years progressing from junior engineer to senior engineer and on to become the only manufacturing NC specialist at BAE Systems' Brough site. The position involved selecting and installing CNC machine tools, as well as supporting other BAE Systems facilities. He worked for three years on the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod refurbishment programme at Prestwick and Farnborough, and also supported BAE's sister site at Samlesbury on 4- and 5-axis machining applications, as well as providing support for Rolls-Royce. Civil and defence aircraft programmes covered include Airbus A330/A340, Eurofighter Typhoon, Hawk advanced jet trainer and Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, Joint Strike Fighter. It was as manufacturing specialist that he first became aware of the advanced solid carbide cutting tools available from SGS, as he explains: "I had one machine that needed to deliver 120 machining hours per week. Using SGS high performance cutting tools and engineering support, we got this down to 40 hours per week. I remember being impressed by the SGS sales team; they are very technically focused and experienced, so they are not afraid to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in. There are not many like that in the industry."