Racing Into Five-Axis Machining

Manufacturing Engineering, Feb 2005

CAM software proved critical to helping a British motorcycle racing team move successfully into five-axis machining, a change that has brought huge benefits on the track and off.

Owned and managed by motorcycle legend and triple World Championship winning rider Kenny Roberts, the Proton KR racing team has brought more of its machining work in-house, giving designers more freedom. Most of the components for the bike's frame also are machined from solid instead of being fabricated.

Proton KR is the only independent team that ran in the 2004 motorcycle Grand Prix racing season. Unlike factory-sponsored teams, Proton develops and builds its own racing designs at a manufacturing facility outside Banbury, England.

Programmer and machine operator Andy Stokes says it took a little time to take full advantage of the company's new DMG DMU 50 eVolution five-axis machining center. "With five-axis machining, you have to look at the job a bit differently," he explains. "You need to adjust your approach to fixturing and workholding to access the maximum number of features in each setup. But once you're used to it, five-axis machining makes things easier, even for parts that could be made with our threeaxis machine."

The transition to five-axis was facilitated by Proton KR's choice of CAM system, PowerMill from Delcam pic (Birmingham, England). Stokes says the combination of CAM, wire EDM, and five-axis machining has enabled Proton to fabricate motorcycle frame components from solid. "Manufacturing from solid gives better structural integrity at lower weight than the equivalent fabricated parts," Stokes explains. "With our new methods, we have reduced the weight of the bike by more than 15 kg."

"In addition, the machined components are much more consistent," he says. "Previously, we always had to grind new parts to make them fit. Now, we can take spares off the shelf and know they fit straight onto the bike."

The combination of PowerMill and five-axis machining has also been used for R&D work on the team's new 990cm^sup 3^, V-5 engine. "We have machined many different port designs to try and obtain the optimum engine performance," Stokes says. "PowerMill has the flexibility needed for this work. It has done everything I've asked it to."

Another area where continuous five-axis machining has proved useful is in the manufacture of tooling for carbon-fiber composite parts and in trimming the composite components.

Stokes predicts even better results from the DMG machine in the future. "The designers now realize what it can do, so they're changing the way they think," he explains. "With the three-axis machine, I often had to ask for designs to be simplified to make them manufacturable. Now, I can normally manufacture anything the designers ask for." Circle 223