Hexagon Creates Shopfloor Synergy
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Formed out of a previous company that had been trading since 1976, Tooling 2000 has invested more than £1.8 million in the last two years in its 5-axis laser cutting and CNC machining departments. The investment also included the upgrading of some of its Hurco machining centres, keeping with the brand due to the ease-of-programming. For more complicated components that demand a high-end CAM solution, the company has turned to Hexagon.
Gary Williams from Tooling 2000 says: “Hexagon software has created that synergy right from concept through to delivery of parts. We have opted for Hexagon software, so we can program our components off-line. We were predominantly working in the automotive sector for customers like Rolls-Royce and Bentley. What we are now looking to do with our increased investment is diversify into new market sectors such as general engineering, military and rail. Having Hexagon come on board and support us, I feel we can move into different industry sectors comfortably and competently.”
Picking up the story, Hexagon’s Marcus Gardner adds: “Hexagon has predominantly been known down the years as a metrology company, producing and providing solutions for CMMs right down to measuring equipment for inspection. The products being used from our portfolio at Tooling 2000 include VISI design, validation and creation of data imported from customers. They take that data once it is validated within VISI and move into the manufacturing world where Hexagon’s Work NC is used to manufacture components. This is used for everything from 2-axis right up to 5-axis simultaneous machining.”
“This provides machine verification and ‘prove-outs’ to reduce bottlenecks on the shop floor – this is completed with our product NCSIMUL. NCSIMUL takes the G-code verification and removes any operator errors from the business. Following the machining processes, we take this back to metrology, and we use the Romer Absolute Arm on the shop floor. This allows Tooling 2000 to take a part from the machine and conduct some quick analysis and measurement. For full-scale inspection, we have the CNC-controlled CMM and inspection area,” says Marcus.
“Another major benefit of the Hexagon portfolio with it being in production software and metrology is that they all talk to each other seamlessly. This creates a link between the software and hardware and vice versa. For example, VISI can talk to the Romer Arm through a plug-and-play synergy. This gives us great belief in our products on the shop floor.”
Adding to this, Hexagon’s Philip Smith says: “What we have done at Tooling 2000, is we have taken the VISI software and the native data and then taken the feature data in Work NC to capture that data. With customers like Tooling 2000, we work on a project basis where we plan everything from the start, from training to testing the processes and the postprocessors to making sure the customers cannot have a collision. We also spend a lot of time building the tooling into the system. When we do this, we are also capturing the data from the machinists on the shop floor. We build this information into Work NC. As an example, we have taken one part from two days of programming to just four hours. That is the benefit of working with the customer, building a relationship and working with the tools around us to put that data and technology inside Work NC.”
“Once we have this configured, we apply NCSIMUL to run the raw G-code. This enables us to see if there are any offsets on the control, investigate the tool changes and optimise the G-code to provide an accurate cycle time that takes into account acceleration, deceleration, macros within the controls and tool changes.”
Concluding on the partnership with Hexagon, Gary Williams from Tooling 2000 says: “Having the Hexagon software on site now allows us to provide customers with more accurate quotes with a shorter lead time. The Romer Arm gives us the ability to reverse engineer projects on-site. It also gives us the ability to take the Arm off-site to capture data from larger jobs that cannot be brought in. This gives us the ability to reverse engineer and manufacture large components. Recognising OEM requirements, we have successfully attained IATF:16949 to support that, we have put in a CNC CMM that allows us to repeatedly and accurately check any production parts we manufacture. The CMM is driven by Hexagon software, once again creating that synergy from concept to delivery.”
