Open Minded about Productivity Gains

Open Mind Works With Seco Tooling

Open Mind Technologies recently participated in the Seco Tools Open House in Alcester and used this opportunity to announce the new working relationship between the two companies.

The three day event focused on the aerospace sector and how Seco has partnered a number of aerospace manufacturers to provide sustainable improvements in production costs, strategy and product quality.

Providing these benefits to companies such as Rolls Royce, Airbus UK and Messier Dowty is credit to the Seco 'JetStream' technology and the compatibility of its product range to work with 3, 4 and 5-axis applications, such as the machining of blings, blisks and impellers.

At the Open House, the 5-axis philosophy was supported by 5-axis specialists such as Mazak, Renishaw and Open Mind Technologies.

The three day event included aerospace presentations from Seco, Rolls Royce and Airbus UK engineers.

Delivered to subcontractors and 1st tier aerospace suppliers, the presentations provided an environment ideal for Open Mind to discuss the benefits of its software packages, especially hyperMILL.

The Open Mind presence at this aerospace event follows an extremely successful appearance at the recent Farnborough Air Show.

The increasing interest in the hyperMILL system from aerospace manufacturers is justified with its major competitive edge through fast setups and increased machine tool productivity that is unrivalled in the industry.

hyperMILL is ideal for almost every machining operation, but most importantly it is suitable for the manufacture of demanding turbine components such as blings, blisks, impellers and blades.

The high performance geometry oriented CAM software offers 2.5D, 3D and 5-axis machining strategies under one uniform interface.

Most importantly, the hyperMILL package has exceptional collision avoidance protection.

This eradicates the requirement for a customer to employ CAD/CAM software and then run each process through a separate collision detection package.

The built-in collision detection not only avoids all potential accidents, it also provides alternate cutter paths.

"We are now working with Seco to automate the 5-axis machining processes".

"Working with aerospace manufacturers, the relationship with Seco enables Open Mind to look at projects from a software perspective while Seco discuss the same project from a tooling standpoint".

"Once we have both conducted our relevant projects, the customer can come to the Seco facility and view the solution on a Mazak, Mori Seiki or Hermle machining centre".

"From this we can work to implement a complete turnkey solution for the customer".

"These three days mark the start of a relationship with Seco that could potentially be of great significance to both parties," says Richard Nolan, Sales and Marketing Director, Open Mind Technologies UK .

Commenting on the collaboration with Open Mind, Mr Peter Wiseman, UK Technical Manager, Seco Tools UK says: "We were impressed with how quickly Open Mind were able to create the titanium blade demo parts that we gave away to the attendees of the event".

"It was a great example of how Open Minds' hyperMILL 5 Axis Blade Cycles compliment Seco's Jabro tooling".

Open Mind Technical Director Adrian Smith comments: "The problem that many customers have with packages from alternate vendors is collision detection".

"Our system interrogates the surface and guides the tool around the geometries in 5-axis taking into account any obstacles".

"With alternate packages this is not guaranteed, and if an obstacle is found the package will re-calculate the toolpath and re-run".

"This series of events will perpetually repeat itself until a suitable path around the obstacle is found".

"With the Open Mind hyperMILL, the toolpath will avoid collision automatically and without the need for additional simulation products to assist tool collision avoidance".

hyperMILL uses logic based cycles to drive the cutting tool around the component.

One customer previously used an alternate package that required manual programming of impellers.

This took the customer 10 days from project start to finish machined part, he now uses hyperMILL and can program and machine an impeller in one day.

hyperMILL simplifies the CAD/CAM process with 40 dedicated 5-axis cycles that enables manufacturers to select the operation best suited to the job in hand.

This ensures the user does not have to rely on the 5 or 6 generic 5-axis cycles typically offered by other CAM vendors.

Encompassed within the forty 5-axis cycles is what Open Mind calls 'Logic Cycles'.

These logic cycles are dedicated to single and/or multi-blade machining and tube machining.

Taking ease-of-use to a completely new level, the logic cycles are dedicated templates that provide the CNC control programmer the ability to be cutting highly complex 5-axis, simultaneous parts in next to no time.

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