CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
November 2005
Implementation Investments
Oxford Engineering Takes Lean Manufacturing Forward with EdgeCAM Multi-Task Mill/Turn Machining
Oxford Engineering Limited is a 100-person, £8m turnover, "one-stop shop" contract manufacturing business long established in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. It also has a recently opened facility in Estonia - Oxford Engineering Eesti OÜ.
The company concentrates on smaller runs, not high volume, for an extremely diverse range of markets. The demanding world of aerospace is one; others include medical, entertainment, and power generation. Typical batch size is between five and 50, and enormous efficiency, discipline and flexibility are pre-requisites. For a new commission at Oxford Engineering, paperwork flies around in all directions. Materials - titaniums, stainless steels, aluminiums, plastics - have to be ordered in rapidly, special tools may need to be ordered or jigs or fixtures manufactured, sub-contracting of outside processes such as anodizing or vacuum braising has to be administered. "Total manufacture" is important for many of the company's customers who are happy to be relieved of the control burden by Oxford Engineering and its effective systems.
An important company characteristic is openness. As part of this, Oxford Engineering publishes its strategies on its website. One of them is "To operate towards the leading-edge of technology and to invest sufficiently in our people and equipment, to ensure a high level of competence." An investment made during the 1980s was in the company's first CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) products; two decades later Oxford Engineering is still an enthusiastic user of EdgeCAM software by Pathtrace Engineering Systems Limited.
Another of the company's strategies - there are 12 in all - is "Continual cost reduction and efficiency improvement will be aggressively pursued by all". So how is EdgeCAM helping the company to achieve its aims?
Towards single hit machining
Jon Raimbach, engineering manager at Oxford Engineering, comments: "We all recognize the fact that we can't stand still, otherwise we will stagnate." Their dynamism is exemplified by the company's early adoption of multi task machining - mill/turn operations carried out by a single machine tool.
This relatively recent purchase is a Yamasaki/Mazak Integrex MS200 twin spindle turning and milling machine. The benefits of these new generation combined mill/turn machines are well known: reduced fixturing costs, no downtime/setup time between milling and turning operations, increased part accuracy because of the tighter tolerances that can be held between milling and turning operations, and floor space freed in the workshop.
The fact is, though, that unlike previous generations of machine tools, multi task machines cannot program themselves to achieve anything like maximum efficiency. Considerable software capability is needed to master the complexities of spindle synchronization; collision avoidance is another major consideration. Simultaneous machining optimization of all the various elements of the machine is absolutely crucial if the full benefits are to be achieved and the ROI period of the machine tool minimized. EdgeCAM offers unique capability in programming multi task machines like the Integrex.
Taking advantage
The need has always been to achieve greater accuracy and higher quality while reducing lead times and speeding up the production cycle time.
The initial CAM software purchase by the company no doubt had a similar "this is the trend, and we're going for it" feeling about it that decisions about multi-task machine tools have at present for forward-looking firms.
Today, the EdgeCAM software used by Oxford Engineering includes EdgeCAM Solid Machinist, EdgeCAM Part Modeler, EdgeCAM Advanced Production and EdgeCAM Turning.
"User friendly and functionality fine!"
Jon Raimbach describes EdgeCAM as "well proven software that suits our needs admirably". Functionality is obviously part of this, and is important for a company where "We pride ourselves on doing awkward parts that others might struggle with or shy away from."
Another key aspect is ease of use. Here EdgeCAM scores highly. It has done so increasingly during the ongoing development and considerable change in the software that Jon Raimbach has watched, initially though not latterly as a user of EdgeCAM himself. "It was always easy to use, but now, using mouse and pictures, it's a lot easier to do something that is actually quite complicated."
In the earlier days the company trained its programmers from those who worked on its own shop floor. "They knew nothing about CAM. They went through the standard training course at Pathtrace, and got my knowledge too." Of two men in this category, he says "They picked it up really well - I suppose an advertisement for how easy it is." Years on, one of these programmers has recently been through sub-spindle and B-axis advanced turning training in order to program the new Mazak Integrex.
Jon Raimbach likes to compare views on these matters, and says he is encouraged by hearing similarly positive EdgeCAM messages from people with experience of other CAM software. An opportunity for comparisons arises, albeit infrequently, when there is a personnel change among Oxford Engineering's three programmers. Invariably when someone new joins the company and the topic is discussed he encounters agreement with his own view of EdgeCAM as generally the best. He sums it up as "User friendly and functionality fine!"
Jon Raimbach also comments favorably on the way Pathtrace has supported his company over the years. There may also have been a certain synergy between Oxford Engineering and Pathtrace based on always working forwards - seeking to stay ahead of the game. He says: "They've got a good development team there, and they're going on developing it."
Massively reduced complexity and lead times
Chris Budd, Oxford Engineering's sales and marketing director, is also highly complimentary about EdgeCAM vis-à-vis its competitors. "It's simpler to use, and better." An additional reason for his belief is summed up by the word associativity. "You can translate designs from CAD. Solidworks and Unigraphics come straight in" - as do those created using many other leading CAD packages.
Oxford Engineering offers its own design service, but EdgeCAM's ability to take in and make direct use of customers' CAD designs is an important aspect of the company's offering. Not only is there an image aspect to this, there is also something much more fundamental.
Jon Raimbach explains: "EdgeCAM plays a massive part in reducing complexity and timescales". Customers can send in either a CAD drawing or a model to Oxford Engineering. Then, "We can use EdgeCAM quickly as well as knowing we have the process in place for the reduced batch size. So we can get the parts through quickly, saving money, and reducing human error."
Oxford Engineering has recently purchased EdgeCAM Part Modeler, and he says: "It's very easy to create models, so that even if you are doing a simple part, it's nice to create a model to look at." He notes that more and more of their customers are also using solid modeling software for part and fixture creation.
Some of the company's customers are not very interested in the software aspects of how parts are made, only in getting their own parts produced. Others, says Jon Raimbach, are impressed by the fact that Oxford Engineering can take their solid model and use it to create the cutter paths.
A demanding customer
If you pay for something, you should get your money's worth, is another Oxford Engineering theme, and this applies to CAM software as well as anything else. Jon Raimbach says: "I am quite demanding in that I like post processors to give all the information possible, so that there is minimal editing of the programs after the event. The reason for that is that if there are any changes or edits to be made, then the source file has got all the information."
He knows that some users of CAM software use it "just to do the awkward bits", and then type in the rest themselves, or edit at the machine, but as he points out, this calls for full understanding and skill on the shop floor. "If you have less experienced people at the machines, you don't want to be paying them to learn the software" - and if you're Oxford Engineering, you don't have the time luxury for that anyway. So he expects the programs to "have every i dotted and t crossed".
Telling figures
Patricia Hewitt MP, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, outlined a telling set of figures in 2003 when she visited Oxford Engineering after its involvement in a project with the DTI's Manufacturing Advisory Service. The aim had been to improve productivity, and Patricia Hewitt quoted the company as having achieved savings of 75% in process traveling distances, 35% in set up times, 29% in lead times and 11% in space utilized.
Oxford Engineering keeps solidly to its improvement strategies. Jon Raimbach comments that EdgeCAM has to work hard at Oxford Engineering - and that it does, to the extent that the company wouldn't like to be without it. "You don't have the verification if you are manually typing. It is far easier to make mistakes, and you can't easily see 3-dimensional objects as you can now."
His own figures are interesting too, taken in combination with all the qualitative benefits of EdgeCAM, and especially in the light of the differences that the right software can make to multi task machining. "Looking through some timesheets, on average it looks as though we take between two and six hours to program new parts using EdgeCAM," he finds. "If we didn't have that, I'd be guessing, but you could probably treble those times, if not more in some cases."
The multi task machine is a current pre-occupation, but it's part of the ongoing Oxford Engineering story. Jon Raimbach is just as excited about the useful role that he sees for EdgeCAM in helping the new Estonian facility become as effective as that in Oxfordshire - and, perhaps, in other new phases and developments as yet unknown.
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