Process Engineering GETS A DIGITAL BOOST

Manufacturing Engineering, Mar 2007 by Morey, Bruce

Linking software systems captures best practices and speeds process design

Remmele Engineering (New Brighton, MN), a $93 million/year business with four plants in Minnesota, specializes in low-volume parts that require a high degree of manufacturing expertise. Designing the most cost-effective, high-quality manufacturing process in as short a time as possible is vital. "Lead times are becoming weeks where before they were months," says Red Heitkamp, director of advanced manufacturing engineering at Remmele.

Improving process design required standardizing the company's digital foundation of manufacturing software and data. The company has completed the first phase of this program. Just three years ago, Remmele was using about a dozen different CAD/CAM systems and several different DNC systems, each requiring dedicated personnel for that particular system. Moreover, these CAD/CAM systems were focused on a particular industry (for instance one for aerospace and one for defense). If an order came in from another industry, it was difficult for Remmele to make use of all of its facilities, because of the CAM systems' incompatibility. Even the simple matter of knowing what milling or cutting tools were available and where they were located was, in reality, not so simple.

"While it's important to continue improving machine technology, we feel that there is much to be gained from applying automation to the front end of our process," says Heitkamp.

Besides streamlining close to a dozen different CAD/CAM systems, the improvements have simplified the work of manufacturing engineers. What Remmele has done goes beyond standardization-they have integrated the software and incorporated machine-specific information to reduce the process-design workload.

Tool management alone has reduced the number of manual steps an engineer must perform. Like many contract manufacturers, Remmele has hundreds of unique tools, including drills, reamers, end mills, taps, face mills, slitting saws, collets, holders, arbors, and extensions. Remmele created a database for these tools, and introduced procedures to keep track of them. Now, the company's manufacturing engineers know what tools are available and where they are.

Tool management means more than knowing what and where. It also means knowing what the tool can do. The manufacturing engineer and CAM programmer now have, for certain machines, accurate cutter definitions, consistent feeds and speeds, and accuracy-simulation graphics for each tool-on-line at their desks-during the design process. Because this information is autoloaded, 50% of the manual steps that were part of the CAM programmer's job are eliminated.

Improved change-control procedures are another benefit of Remmele's digital foundation. For example, the company received a large (approximately 2 × 8 m) complex part in Catia V5 from a customer who then-after Remmele began designing its manufacturing process-requested several revisions. Identifying the changes to its process caused by these engineering design changes was easy, even after programming hundreds of cutter paths. "For cases like this, the amount of time to process a revision change used to be eight hours and is now 15-20 min," says Mark Conley, CAM/EDI center manager.

To achieve this digital foundation, Remmele needed common software. Then the company required common data, processes, and procedures to achieve the savings cited above.

Five basic software toolsets were identified as standards for their corporate-wide system.

* Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM),

* Performance prediction software,

* Tool data management (TDM),

* Engineering data management (EDM), and

* Distributed numerical control (DNC).

The CAM product they finally chose is NX from UGS (Piano, TX). Choosing a single CAM product was a challenge. Although Remmele wanted to standardize on one common product definition description, it also had to recognize the diversity of its customers. "We deal with so many industries; we don't have the luxury of being picky about what kind of models we can receive," says Heitkamp, "we have to take them all."

Customers provide models to Remmele in Catia V4 format, PTC, and SolidWorks, among others. Remmele needs to translate multiple definitions into a single master.

Fortunately, software from Translation Technologies (Spokane, WA) worked well for them. "This is really a remastering package that preserves the intelligence in the model provided by our customers," explains Conley. "It saves us time and effort in not having to re-enter that intelligence manually, and goes beyond a nominal STEP conversion."

Remastering creates a universal smart model in UGS NX format that preserves parametric data, features, or GD&T that may have been present in the original.

Future growth was another reason to choose UGS NX. "UGS NX has an open architecture," says Conley, "it lends itself to customization and automation." NX has an application programmer's interface (API) that allows users to include C , Java, and Visual Basic (VB.net).