Totally
automatic
Why can’t NC programming for subtractive metalcutting be as easy as it is for additive manufacturing?
Basically, present a 3D fi le to a programming system and press ‘go’. Andrew Allcock visited a company
that has achieved that, but also has a much larger ambition (extended online: https://is.gd/megaya)
acceptable way to make components, but it is beyond our
capability to nd the optimal path to make a component
with the available equipment, because there are too
many ways of achieving it.”
In talking to industry bodies, the CEO says that almost
everything out of what he suggests is a global £100bn+
component machining annual market is made at a rate
that is half as fast as is possible, meaning costs can be
halved “with no changes to the equipment whatsoever”.
He continues: “If you could make this process
autonomous; if you could automate the programming and
optimise the resulting machining program, then you could
more than halve the cost of making all those metal
components. In some cases, depending on the method
of manufacture, you could reduce part cost by a factor of
10. And that is what we have been working on, in secret,
for the last four years.”
The developed software is fed a 3D part le having
associated tolerance requirements, the starting block
size is de ned, with the manufacturing equipment
parameters – material, machine, workholding, tools –
known to the software. After that, the generation of the
optimal NC program is achieved in “minutes”. An
aerospace part that would have taken a week to program
can be processed in just 10 minutes and is “pretty much
Above: Still
plenty of space
at Chelmsford,
but more
machinery will
arrive in the
coming months
Below: regular
continuous
improvement
activities are
underway at
Chelmsford –
see extended
online article:
https://is.gd/
megaya
The reality of NC programming for complex prismatic
parts, as readers know, is that the generation of a
set of instructions to drive a CNC machine can
take days or even weeks. Even for more simple parts it
still consumes hours of skilled, experienced effort using
“horrible-looking software, CAM”, so posits Theo Saville,
CEO of CloudNC, a UK-headquartered, venture capitalfunded
software development and CNC machining
company that has just come out of ‘stealth mode’.
Whether making a prototype or setting up to make
millions of parts using metalcutting CNC machine tools,
NC programming is a constant, but the lower the batch
size the greater is the proportion of the entire design-tomake
cycle that NC programming consumes. “If you are
in the low-volume batch-to-prototype space, that CAM
programming can easily make up 90% of what we are
charging to the customer. So, small batches and
prototypes are phenomenally more expensive than they
need to be,” Saville states.
A secondary issue is that most machining cycles
generated via the traditional programming route are
inef cient, he adds. “There are trillions of ways of
making even a simple component with one of these CNC
machines. However, only a few of those ways is truly
fast. Humans are very good at coming up with an
10 September 2019 www.machinery.co.uk @MachineryTweets
/megaya)
/
/www.machinery.co.uk