Doncasters Precision Castings - Deritend is a leading supplier of industrial gas turbine blade investment casting and machining applications, and its blade products are made of nickel-cobalt superalloy.
Doncasters Precision Castings - Engineering Ollie Macrow, Deritend's engineering unit, is reviewing the benchmarking results
The company is committed to long-term growth and ensures that its development goals are met through continued investment in lean manufacturing and rapid prototyping. As a result, customers' demand for machining services from Doncasters has increased dramatically, which in turn Boosted the company's investment casting business and these strong demands also prompted the company to invest more than two million pounds in upgrading its infrastructure and acquiring Mazak machine tools and machining software to efficiently process more than 14 new products.
background
Before investing in the Mazak 5-Axis Machining Center, Doncasters used a traditional 3-axis machining center with fixed fixtures to perform similar operations, which were not only time-consuming but also required high levels of skill by machine operators, such as a The typical nozzle assembly, which includes setup and processing, has a production cycle of four hours, far less than the capacity of an ever-growing customer base. In addition, stationary fixtures are considered by companies' engineers as outdated technologies , A costly solution, the company decided to make a major investment in product processing capacity - they ordered three Mazak VORTEX i-630V / 6 vertical machining centers and Doncasters could use them to be done in-house Processing operations, so as to provide customers a one-stop solution.
Doncasters Precision Castings - Deritend Manufacturing Workshop
As part of the investment, Doncasters assembled Renishaw's RMP600 high-precision probes on these machines using Renishaw's patented RENGAGE ™ Strain Gauge technology. When measuring complex 3D shapes and contours, these measurements Heads provide unrivaled sub-micron accuracy and are therefore well suited for these machining operations. However, Doncasters recognized that they would need additional technical support when they first deployed the new equipment, so Renishaw contacted its affiliates MSP Metrology Software Products Co., Ltd.
challenge
Doncasters faces the challenge of increasing the 'one-off-process' ratio of workpieces to improve overall productivity so they need to eliminate as much of the error as possible, explains Ollie Macrow, engineering manager at Doncasters:' In processing these £ 10,000 Of Inconel castings, it is best that we can beat the chest to ensure there is no problem with the machined parts before the start of the cut, while also considering the cost factor: in addition to the cost of the castings, there is a loss of time to consider Due to the nature of the material, the cost of the process itself is relatively high, and in addition some of the process components can not be reworked, so in the event of an error, they must be scrapped.We know that the workpiece has to be measured but the challenge we face is finding the right Even more difficult is the company's experience in probe measurement is very limited, before only using the probe to do some basic positioning adjustments and simple plane alignment operations, so Renishaw's Help and guidance are of the utmost importance to them.
In the meantime, Doncasters also hopes to eliminate the need for costly and time-consuming, fixed fixtures. "Fixture fixtures have many problems: they are expensive, have a high level of skill to position the workpieces accurately, and if the fixtures fail, The process will not be able to continue, so the fixtures must be maintained frequently to maintain their good performance, which in turn adds time and cost and we would like to replace these fixtures with a more streamlined modular fixture system to reduce setup In the process of manual intervention, Ollie continues, Doncasters must also ensure that its production goals are met, thus reducing workpiece alignment time as a key consideration in the introduction of Mazak machines. Doncasters used these new machines to do most of the machining jobs internally, There are still some auxiliary jobs that need to be outsourced and the company hopes to get those outsourcing jobs done in-house by increasing productivity. "This will have a positive impact on our productivity, and if we can do it ourselves, Sent to other companies for processing, and then wait two days to The machined workpiece, 'Ollie explained.
solution
After a thorough analysis of Doncasters' business, application engineers at Renishaw believe MSP's NC-PerfectPart and NC-Checker software combined with the RMP600 probe will be the best integrated solution to meet Doncasters requirements. The combination of innovative software helps users to determine workpiece positioning errors and machine geometrical errors before cutting the workpiece.The first step is to 'draw' the machine work coordinates to create a datum. The NC-Checker can be used to perform five-axis machine check , Check the performance of the probe, which ensures that the measurement and processing performance will not exceed the set tolerances before aligning and cutting the workpiece.Machine inspection can be performed on a regular basis, only a few minutes at a time.As time These checks ensure that the operating parameters of the machine are always correct and produce the correct part.
NC-Checker Monthly Reference Setup Screen
NC-PerfectPart solves the problem caused by poor machine alignment on the machine, which is crucial for complex and irregularly shaped workpieces and for workpieces that require 5-axis machining. Finishing these workpieces can be time-consuming, At the same time difficult to accurately and accurately.Now, operators can now create a measurement program for the RMP600 based on the CAD files of the artifacts, which can be easily solved.
First, the probe measurement data to find the workpiece, to eliminate the workpiece in the machine positioning deviation.Then, the correct data will be uploaded to the machine controller; Machine automatically calculate the compensation to generate a perfect match with the workpiece position processing program. The alignment process is completely automated, which means that the fixture's role in the machining process is less important anymore; all manual setting errors can be eliminated - even the most complex workpieces will find the time needed Shorten to a few minutes.
In addition, material conditions, tray loading system performance, and temperature can be taken into account during the initial stages of the process to further reduce the risk of producing unacceptable parts.
After completing the cutting, NC-PerfectPart verifies the accuracy of the finished part in the machine, which can be done before the workpiece is removed from the machine and placed in the CMM to perform the inspection.
result
Before the RMP600 and MSP software were acquired, it took four hours to find and process a typical industrial gas turbine nozzle workpiece, and now Doncasters can measure, process and inspect the same workpieces in less than two hours, resulting in an increase in production efficiency of 50 %. For more complex workpieces, the previous machining time can take up to eight hours and requires a high level of operator control over the entire process. Today, machining of these workpieces takes only two hours, unlike the machining of simple workpieces So savings can be realized. By working with Renishaw and MSP, Doncasters improved the workpiece alignment system and achieved better results; meanwhile, in-machine measurement data, CMM measurement data, and Bluelight system scan data The correlation between the degree has also been improved.
RMP600 machine tool probe to measure blade position
Commenting on the results achieved, Ollie Macrow explained: 'The results are encouraging, but we will not be able to make progress today without the help of Renishaw and the MSP.'
He went on to say, 'When we first decided to buy these machines, we asked how Mazak' could significantly improve processing efficiency. 'They did not think it would be possible at our current level of configuration and we would turn to Renishaw, It was Renishaw who co-operated with MSP to provide us with the solutions we needed, and we have dramatically increased the 'one-off process' artifact ratio and so have been well received by our customers. I really think without Renishaw and MSP We could not successfully process the parts, they gave us great services, they always had questions and answers every time we called and they always came in every time we needed help.