Black Country tool maker and sub-contractor Cube Precision Engineering has installed its largest Hurco machining centre to date
www.hurco.com, a bridge-type vertical-spindle DCX32. Installed in May this year, it is the fifth machining centre from the same supplier to be bought by Rowley Regis-based Cube.
This latest purchase follows recent strong business growth, particularly in the manufacture of automotive press tools for producing interior components and body parts for major automotive manufacturers including Land Rover, Jaguar, BMW and Honda. Turnover at the 35-employee firm is expected to increase this year by more than 12% (compared with 2011) to £3.5 million.
One recent high-profile job involved completing work on tools for pressing the door outer panels that go into the new all-aluminium Range Rover (L405), launched at the recent Paris Motor Show. Other press tools machined on the three-axis DCX32, which has a work envelope of 3,200 x 2,100 x 920mm, include those for producing the wheel arches for the Jaguar F-Type (X152) — a new aluminium-chassis two-seater sports car due to go into production in 2013.
Mould tools, progression dies and transfer tooling are also produced on a total of 11 CNC machines, which are run 24hr a day, five days a week at Cube’s Rowley Regis factory. The larger machines are fitted with multi-axis heads to allow the 3+2-axis CNC machining of complex components.
Outside the automotive industry, the Hurco DCX regularly produces aerospace components (including for jet engine research); it also machines parts for armoured personnel carriers and tanks. The materials processed include aluminium, cast iron, Armox, aerospace-grade steels and Inconel, as well as D2 and P20 tool steels. Almost all work is for ‘primes’ and Tier One manufacturing companies.
Cube’s service encompasses proving the tooling it produces on presses with bed lengths up to 4.5m and rated at 1,000 tonnes. For the aerospace sector, the company designs and manufactures tooling used in the die-quench and super- plastic-forming processes, as well as tools used for forming a variety of composite materials.
Eliminating a bottleneck
Neil Clifton, one of three director-owners of Cube, says: “We are one of very few companies in the UK that has invested in the space, crane-age and equipment to machine parts to 5m in X and weighing up to 35 tonnes. The finish-machining of large parts was causing a bottleneck, so we opted for a Hurco DCX32, as it was competitively priced for a machine with over 6m
3 of working volume.
“Despite its size, the machine easily achieves general tolerances of 0.03mm and regularly goes down to 0.02mm — and with excellent surface finish. We also like the fact that it comes with a 40-position magazine and automatic tool changer for BT50 cutters as standard. Such equipment normally costs extra on a machining centre of this size.”
Another benefit of the machine is that Cube’s operators were already familiar with the twin-screen WinMax/Ultimax control (it is fitted on the other four Hurcos on the site), so they could move seamlessly onto the identical CNC system controlling the DCX32 (WinMax has a comprehensive conversational shopfloor programming capability and a second screen on which a graphic of the part is displayed as the cycles are built up).
Mr Clifton says that, in practice, most 3-D cycles are prepared off-line from customers’ models, imported into Delcam PowerShape (via IGES if necessary), and processed using PowerMill CAM software. Changes to a job can require urgent attention, such as alterations to a tool when automotive body parts are not fitting together properly during a vehicle’s initial build phase; this necessitates prompt programming off-line from a revised solid model while the tool is being transported back to Cube.
That said, it is usual for the more-simple 2-D elements of a program to be programmed at the control by the machine operator. One of the benefits of WinMax is that such cycles can be easily merged with the 3-D cutter paths prepared externally. Previously, such an approach would have resulted in two separate cutting cycles.