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Producer of low volume reaction injection moulded parts and polyurethane castings uses five vertical machining centres to cut master pattern equipment from polyurethane tooling board

The Midas Pattern Company specialises in the production of low volume, high quality reaction injection moulded (RIM) parts and polyurethane castings (PuR). The company intends to dramatically shorten the time and cost for a designer to move from a CAD model to a fully functioning prototype/finished usable component.

The production material has to validate design and produce a saleable product.

Midas uses five Haas CNC vertical machining centres (VMC) – typically to cut the master pattern equipment from polyurethane tooling board.

Midas said that one of the main reasons for choosing Haas CNC machine tools was reliability and user-friendliness.

Based in Bedfordshire, UK, the Midas Pattern Company was established in 1989 as a precision foundry toolmaking company.

The company has developed into a substantial business integrating CADCAM and CNC toolmaking techniques with traditional pattern and mould making skills.

Managing director of Midas, Alan Rance, said: ‘We aim to dramatically shorten the time and cost for a designer to move from a CAD model to a fully functioning example of a new product – not just a prototype, but a finished part, made from production material that not only validates design but is truly saleable in the market place’.

Midas uses a novel composite tooling system, MRIM, which offers a production moulding technique that can produce quantities from 1 to 5000-off.

Midas said it is ideally suited for making large parts or components with multiple assemblies and complex features.

Rance said: ‘We make parts in the production intent polymers that enable our customers to produce low volume examples of new and prototype products without incurring the very high cost of metal tooling or the compromises in functionality and mechanical properties you expect with traditional RP techniques’.

Based on RIM and PuR, the company’s FASTrim service offers a competitive alternative to SLLS/Silicon and VAC casting.

FASTrim can provide finished parts in as little as 10-15 working days, using cast PuR and soft tooling CNC machined directly from 3D CAD data.

Typical customers include medical technology companies building low-volume, high value instrumentation – machines that can cost hundreds of thousands of Pounds each but are usually built in low numbers.

* About RIM – Rachel Collier, Midas’ technical sales manager, said that reaction injection moulding, utilising MRIM tooling is ideal for the instrumentation industry.

She said: ‘Customers may only want to produce between, say, 10 and 20 finished products a year.

For example, if a customer designs and builds a new mass spectrometry machine costing many thousands of Pounds, it wouldn’t make sense to lay down metal tooling suitable for thousands of parts when you only need a few’.

Many of today’s medical equipment manufacturing companies are relatively small – often founded by individuals departing larger organisations – and perhaps only aiming at niche markets.

As recently as 20 years ago, such companies probably wouldn’t have existed without the patronage of a corporate benefactor – a large, well-financed parent organisation, for example – or some other significant investor.

Developing a new product was hugely and prohibitively expensive.

These days, even small firms can use the services of companies like Midas Pattern to get their products to market at a fraction of the traditional cost and to compete head-on with the big, well-funded players.

‘We’re not a typical plastics company so we’re not obsessed with high-volumes,’ said Collier.

‘We’ve taken all of the techniques and the principles we’ve learnt in the very specialised foundry pattern-making sector and applied them to making high quality plastic parts in small numbers’.

The Midas process starts by building tooling models within CAD (Computer Aided Design).

From these CAD models complex CAM (Computer Aided Machining) software is used to generate cutter paths.

The code for these paths can then be downloaded to one of the company’s five Haas CNC VMCs.

The VMCs include a 12,000 rev/min spindle VF-4SS, a VF-6 with a 4th axis Haas rotary table.

There is a a large 2m x 1m VF9.

The machines typically cut master pattern equipment from polyurethane tooling board.

‘Once we have the master pattern equipment we then use it to produce a composite metallised resin injection mould tool – MRIM,’ said Collier.

‘That’s about as much as I can tell you.

The detail of the process is a closely guarded secret’.

She added that the skill – the ‘Midas touch’, one could say – is being able to make a good quality tool from the master pattern.

Each of the company’s CAD engineers is also a machine setter, programmer and operator, so when it came to choosing a CNC machine tool, said Haas to manufacturingtalk.com, top of the list of essential criteria were reliability and user-friendliness.

Thanks in part to the precision of the master pattern equipment, Midas MRIM Tooling is guaranteed to produce up to 5000 parts, which is usually far more than a customer needs but does allow them to be used for intermediate production volumes.

A typical mould is around a 1m3 in size, which in the world of mainstream injection moulding would be considered extremely large.

Collier made the point: ‘If you made a hard tool for a part of that size it would cost around 10 times more than one of our composite moulds.

We can also achieve the complexity but without having expensive mechanical movements’.

* Pattern making – pattern making is a labour intensive process, so Midas still relies on its own knowledge workers – skilled pattern and toolmakers – as well as its state-of-the-art machines.

To keep them all busy, the company supplements its core business with a range of other activities.

The Bedford factory, spread across two adjacent sites, is essentially a tool making facility, which produces foundry patterns, jigs and fixtures, rotational mould tools, inspection fixtures and exhibition models.

It also houses a number of Low Pressure RIM moulding machines producing low-runs of finished parts.

‘What all Midas products have in common,’ concluded Collier, ‘Is that they all start with CNC machining, which means that every time Midas delivers a tool or a finished part odds are it started life on a Haas CNC machine tool’.

* About Haas Automation – Haas said that CNC machine tool companies have led the ‘democratisation’ (or freeing up – Ed) of manufacturing production, perhaps none more so than Haas Automation itself, which claimed to be the original low-cost, high-specification machine tool builder.

Founded just twenty years ago in California, USA, but already with more than 85,000 of its products in operation around the world, Haas said it has certainly played an important part in getting affordable, reliable tools in the hands of the ‘industrious and the ingenious’, helping companies like Midas Pattern Company to ‘turn bright ideas into gold’.

With Manual Guide i, the current Fanuc GE CNC controllers can be directly programmed onsite in a simple manner – regardless of whether turning, milling or combining machining processes

Manual Guide i, a user-friendly workshop programming from Fanuc GE, is constantly being developed. In addition to the improvement of diverse machining and milling cycles, it has new functions for multi-channel turning as well as programming in the tilted working plane. With Manual Guide i, the current Fanuc GE CNC controllers can be directly programmed onsite in a simple manner – regardless of whether turning, milling or combined machining processes will be carried out.

Thanks to the basic module and the modules for turning and milling, a user can limit himself to the essentials.

Each module initialises all cycles, leaving the user to easily and quickly program the respective machining process.

* All machining functions on one screen – the ‘all-in-one-screen-design’ provides the user with an overview of all machine functions on one screen.

On this an operator can read all axis positions and rotating speeds, detect where the machine currently is in the program, and display the tool paths or the workpiece in 3D in the simulation window.

To constantly maintain an overview, a bar with soft-keys facilitates intuitive menu selection. This also applies for multichannel turning operations.

* Intelligent functions – for the Series 0i-TTC CNC controller, Manual Guide i makes intelligent functions available, which simplify two-channel turning.

A process table, for example, displays the relation between the spindle and the turret via a timeline.

Standby times and travel paths can also be included.

An additional screen mask serves for simulation: both tool paths can be simultaneously displayed in the 3D model, which primarily serves for NC program control.

Lastly, the all-in-one-screen-design provides an overview on co-ordinates, machine status and the executed programs for both channels.

Even for three-channel turning, which is possible with the Series 30i CNC controller, Manual Guide i makes the corresponding functions available.

* Tilted work plane – there are new functions for tilted working plane (TWP).

With Manual Guide i, the TWP can not only be determined via Eulerian angles but also via the roll, pitch and yaw command (RPY), three points in the space, two vectors, angle projection or the tool axis direction.

In order to be able to easily utilise these options, Fanuc GE has developed a guidance screen which graphically supports the operator while requesting the required data from him in a dialogue.

Also new is the realistic simulation of the generated NC program for the tilted working plane.

It can either be shown as tool paths or as a shaded display.

* About Fanuc GE CNC: – Fanuc GE CNC is a leading global supplier in factory automation.

These include products and solutions for the machine tool market based on a wide range of CNCs, motion control products, monitoring and control software products, CO2 lasers and services.

Fanuc GE CNC is a joint venture between GE and FANUC and the company’s European headquarters are at Fanuc GE CNC Europe in Luxembourg.

CNC platform has advanced scalability, an open user-programmable man-machine interface and software covering tool grinding, gear and high speed cutting and transfer and special machines

NUM (UK) is to launch a radical CNC platform for machine tool manufacturers at MACH 2008. Caled Flexium, it delivers ‘no-compromise’ control system solutions, said NUM (UK). Developed by NUM in France, the Flexium modular platform is claimed to offer unprecedented scalability that can be applied economically on a machine with a few axes, or as many as 200+.

This facility is combined with open programmability that gives users complete freedom to customise the man-machine interface (MMI) and add value, said NUM.

Flexium provides machine builders with a common platform for all system building activities, from standard machines to special-purpose equipment such as transfer machines and integrated production lines.

Supporting the CNC platform is the novel fidelity and accuracy of control that is made possible by NUM’s complete product line and proprietary communication interfaces – from controller to motor – and decades of intellectual property in designing machine tool control systems and software.

At the heart of the new platform is an advanced new CNC kernel.

The kernel is at least four times more powerful than the fastest version of NUM’s existing Axium controller, said NUM (UK) to manufacturingtalk.com.

NUM (UK) said it is a popular choice today in a number of machine tool applications including tool grinding, gear manufacturing, woodworking, high-speed cutting, and transfer and special-purpose machinery.

Two versions of the CNC kernel are available, Flexium 6 and Flexium 68.

* Flexium 6 is a compact solution that is cost-optimised for standalone machines with up to five axes of motion.

* The more powerful Flexium 68 will handle up to 32 interpolated axes, divided into as many as eight coordinated groups.

If more axes are required, to support very large equipment projects such as a multi-cell production line, then Flexium 68s may be interconnected using a real-time Ethernet link.

CANopen interfaces provide additional system expansion capability, including positioning drives, I/O and handwheels, and operator panels.

This allows the Flexium 68 system to be expanded to control over 200 interpolated axes, as well as further positioning axes and I/O.

The CNC kernels are rounded out by a complete range of system building blocks including an industrial PC front end with soft-PLC functionality, MMI panels, I/O modules, drives, and a broad choice of servo and spindle motors.

* Sotware flexibility – the Flexium platform gives machine tool OEMs complete control over the ‘look and feel’ of the machine.

The system’s PLC is programmed according to IEC 61131-3 standards, and offers a choice of development software, providing machine control programming environment in forms to suit individual programmers.

Flexium’s MMI is also completely adaptable, said NUM (UK) and can be easily programmed using standard tools such as HTML, Java Script, or one of the PC-based rapid software development environments such Visual Basic, Delphi, Visual C or C++.

This flexibility allows users to add their own unique ‘look and feel’ branding to each machine.

NUM (UK) said that it is in stark contrast with some competitive platforms, which have fixed user interfaces that may only be modified by the vendor.

* Motion control – NUM’s long-established range of drives and motors complement the Flexium platform with motion control capability that is highly optimised for machine tool applications.

Accuracy and fidelity of motion are central to the control loop, and are achieved by a number of novel measures including a high speed proprietary bus between the CNC kernel and drives, and fine interpolation of the movement profile by closing the positioning loop, at drive level, at 5kHz – an almost unprecedented speed in this application sector, said NUM (UK).

These features are combined with special motors with optimised torque ripple and high inertia characteristics to suit the requirements of the mechanics.

NUM’s control over the complete motion axis chain secures an unmatched performance where it matters most: at the direct mechanical interface to the machine.

Jan Koch of NUM said: ‘NUM’s CNC technology has been developed and refined over decades to the point where it is a leader in some machine tool segments.

We have always complemented this with strong engineering support, and a partnership ethos where we work alongside the machine tool company and take complete responsibility for the control system.’ He added: ‘Flexium greatly widens the applications potential, giving the machine tool industry a platform with almost unlimited applications scope.

We expect it to appeal to small and mid-sized OEMs, providing a common platform for any size of machine.

One that can be completely tailored to their needs, and which has great software flexibility for adding value and building a distinct brand’.

* NUM (UK) at MACH 2008, NEC, Birmingham, UK, April 21-25, hall 5, Stand 5687.

An ESPRIT CAM software add-in provides end users with direct access to the cutting-tool management capabilities of the WinTool Cutting Tool Management System

DP Technology, maker of ESPRIT computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software, said that DATOS has released a WinTool add-in for ESPRIT 2008. This ESPRIT add-in provides end users with direct access to the cutting-tool management capabilities of the WinTool cutting tool Management System. The WinTool system allows users to centrally manage tooling libraries and cutting conditions, and makes these libraries available to a wide variety of users throughout the machine shop.

For ESPRIT, WinTool will automatically generate precise 3D representations of the cutting-tool assemblies for simulation within the CAM system.

The WinTool add-in for ESPRIT is designed to improve the ease of use in tool management and machine set-up.

Using the WinTool system, ESPRIT programmers now have full access to the tool crib, while machine operators receive professional instructions for tool setup generated by the WinTool system.

DP Technology told manufacturingtalk.com that because data can simultaneously be transferred to preset gauges, the occurrence of tooling problems and machining standstills are significantly reduced.

* About ESPRIT – ESPRIT is a high-performance cam system for a full range of machine tool applications.

ESPRIT delivers powerful full-spectrum programming for 2 – to 5-axis milling, 2 – to 22-axis turning, 2- to 5-axis wire EDM, multi-tasking mill-turn machining and B-axis machine tools, and high-speed 3- and 5-axis machining.

ESPRIT’s high-performance capabilities include machining any part geometry (solid, surface, or wireframe), universal post processing to format G-code for virtually any machine tool, and solid simulation and verification with dry runs rendered in dynamic solids for optimal part quality and consistency.

ESPRIT is 100% pure Windows, and provides a comfortable and familiar user interface for maximum productivity.

* About DP Technology – DP Technology is a cam software market leader with a mission to provide CNC programmers with the most powerful CAM software ever.

DP Technology’s flagship product, ESPRIT, captures the company’s vision of technology’s potential and its passion for excellence.

DP Technology maintains its worldwide headquarters in Camarillo, California, USA, and product development teams in California and Florence, Italy.

Sales and support operations are located in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. Request a free brochure from DP Technology….

Special modes for advanced multi-axis machining

Newport Beach, California February 1, 2008 Available from NCCS, NCL multi-axis machining software is used in the aerospace, automotive and turbo machinery industry. NCCS has released its latest version of NCL 9.5, which offers an enhanced blend of automated and user-controlled toolpath generation techniques.

Special Modes

NCL offers special modes that give users the ability to generate more precise toolpaths including:

o The ability to automatically lock the tool axis when generating corners

o The option of the tool axis passing through a point

o The option of the tool axis passing through a 3D curve

o The option of interpolation between a start and end vector

With NCL, users can expect quality, flexibility and absolute tool control. The addition of these special modes helps to minimize programming time and reduce programming inefficiencies.

According to David Schultz, NCCS, Manager of CAD/CAM Applications, NCL offers a unique blend of automated and user-controlled toolpath generation techniques that result in reduced programming time and increased quality. NCL sets the standard for four- and five-axis toolpath generation; there simply is no better solution.

About NCCS

Numerical Control Computer Sciences (NCCS) has been an international supplier of Computer-Aided Manufacturing software and services for over 25 years. A recognized leader in software solutions for multi-axis machining applications, its flagship product NCL, is used by leading manufacturing companies throughout the world. For more information, visit NCCS, website at http://www.nccs.com.