A company that helps people bring their Intellectual Property ideas to the market-place says Radan’s Project CAD/CAM software speeds up the manufacturing process considerably, making the company more efficient.
Northumberland-based Tharsus — described by its owner Brian Palmer as an Original Equipment and Design Manufacturer (OEDM) — has won numerous awards for its work in developing and manufacturing new products. One of these awards was North East Exporter of the Year for Safety-kleen’s Jetkleen parts washer.
The strength of the company is that as well as bringing people’s ideas to life, it is also responsible for the manufacture of a product throughout its lifetime. Tharsus’s head of marketing, Pam Robson, says: “Anyone with new IP can go to a designer, then to a contract manufacturer to have the product made — but we manage both aspects.”
Another product that Tharsus recently brought to market is a device for the company Weedingtech that goes on the bed of a small truck and kills weeds in a herbicide-free way. Two others include the Rapiscan scanning machine, which uses new real-time scanning technology for checking aircraft hold baggage, and the Ekko glass crusher — a small glass-crushing device that reduces empty bottles almost to powder, thereby improving the density of waste in recycling containers and replacing the large containers that pubs wheel out to be emptied by glass recyclers.
All sheet-metal parts are created using Radan software (
www.radan.com). Radpunch drives the company’s two Pullmax punch presses, with Radprofile doing the same for its LVD Axel lasers and Radbend for its press brakes. Project engineer James Heslop says Radan’s Project function is particularly valuable.
“For example, one customer has 77 sheet-metal parts that vary in material type and thickness; this Radan function means we have all their details in one location, allowing us to identify them and change quantities or nest layouts extremely quickly.
“Moreover, having all machine tools combined in one package is a significant advantage that can prevent costly errors with multiple flat patterns spread between systems. Machine change-over time is reduced, and nests can be combined to give even greater sheet utilisation.”
Tharsus also uses the modelling package Radan 3D, which provides another important benefit. “For example, if a hole is too close to an edge, Radan 3D adjusts the bend allowance to suit the tooling — quickly and accurately.”
Components are designed using Autodesk Inventor and sent to the metal-working shop as DXF files. Working with Radan, the remaining stages are a simple step-by-step procedure.
“We upload to Radan using the DXF importer, select the materials and save the job in the customer folder. It’s then programmed for either the punch presses or lasers, depending on the material grades and price, before we check the part and create either a nest or a project.
“If we’re using a project, we’ll pull the part in, set the orientation — depending if it has bend-critical components — and select the quantity.
"We then put it through an automatic run or go through the order and compile, verify and create the run sheet. The CNC punch operators use our DNC link to transfer the programs into the machines. Laser operators also transfer their own programs — but from a separate file, not through DNC.”
Once a part has been created and the production started, Tharsus creates standard nests that are used for each repeat order. These are stored in the system and do not have to be renewed unless there is a revision change.
In conclusion, Mr Heslop says: “Radan is vital to our day-to-day operations. It is used for programming new parts, creating manufacturing data, flat-pattern forming data, nesting for quoting purposes, reducing waste, and making both set-ups and runs as fast as possible.”