Productivity Takes Off for Irish Subcontractor With OPEN MIND

When JW Kane Precision Engineering Ltd invested in new staff and new machine tools that included DMG and Unisign 5-axis machining centres, the tier 1 aerospace supplier wanted to optimise its investment and exploit its 5-axis machining capability with a suitable CAM vendor.

The extensive experience of the CAD/CAM staff at JW Kane and the type of complex aerospace parts produced led to a natural selection of OPEN MIND Technologies hyperMILL^® CAM software.

To maximise the company‘s 5-axis potential

When the Portadown, Northern Ireland based company employed Ryan McClure as the Engineering Team Leader, his primary remit was to develop the company‘s 5-axis machining capability and the CAM software for producing such parts. At the time of Ryan‘s employment, the SC21 Bronze awarded company already had a seat of hyperMILL^® and a seat of a competitors software that were not being fully utilised. As Mr McClure recalls: „When I arrived at JW Kane the company was using a number of CAM packages and with my extensive experience of most CAM packages, it was my position to maximise the company‘s 5-axis potential. At the time I had little experience with hyperMILL^® but its ease of use and intuitive and time saving features now see 95% of our parts programmed with hyperMILL^®.“

50% programming time savings

The success of hyperMILL^® at JW Kane noted the company acquiring a second seat and since this pur­cha­se, the company has continued to improve its production times. In addition to the 50% programming time savings created from mirroring and the cycle time savings from the arbitrary stock model and linking cycle features, JW Kane is continually looking for additional savings. To this end, the company is currently trialling OPEN MIND‘s hyperMILL^® MAXX Machining roughing module that is an optional addition to hyperMILL^®.

www.jwkane.co.uk