Software speeds Hungarians to European award

Euroform, one of Hungary's leading manufacturers of moulds for rubber and plastics, has won this year's European High Speed Machining Award.

Euroform, one of Hungary's leading manufacturers of moulds for rubber and plastics, has won this year's European High Speed Machining Award.

The winning component, part of a mould for a plastic electrical housing, is now on display at Darmstadt University.

The High-Speed Machining Award is presented each year by a panel of specialists drawn from leading manufacturing companies and academic institutions across Europe.

Entries are ranked on a combination of surface quality, component accuracy and machining time.

Csaaba Bognar, the programmer of Euroform's successful entry, is one of the most experienced CADCAM operators in Hungary, having worked with a range of software for more than 15 years.

He said: "PowerMill's calculation speed is the main benefit of the software.

This means that we can quickly investigate a number of alternative strategies and select the best result.

The ability to optimise the leads and links after the toolpath has been calculated, without having to carry out a complete re-calculation, also saves a lot of time.

In addition, being able to isolate and edit individual regions within a part or a toolpath gives more flexibility".

"The software is also gouge-free", he added.

"This is a very important consideration for us with the amount of unmanned machining we do.

High quality finishing is also vital because many of our moulds incorporate free-form surfaces.

I find the 3D offset and spiral constant z strategies very useful for finishing these areas".

The latter techniques were key to Euroform's victory in the High-Speed Machining Award.

"The aim of the competition is to achieve the specified quality level in the least time", explained Bognar.

"Some of the parts submitted by the other entrants had the same quality of finish as our entry", he admitted.

"However, they had used less efficient strategies and so took three or four times longer to produce".

Euroform was founded in 1993 with six people undertaking traditional machining on a single CNC machine.

In 1996, the company purchased its first DMG DMU 100 V Mill to be able to undertake bigger and better moulds.

A second, similar DMG followed in 1999.

The following year, Euroform moved into high-speed machining in 2000 by acquiring a Roders HSM machine with a 36,000rev/min spindle.

It was the Roders machine that was used for the winning entry in the competition.

The company has also added a dedicated machine for cutting electrodes; an OPS machine specially developed for cutting graphite, which is used for 95% of the company's electrodes.

Euroform initially used Matra Datavision's Euclid software but switched to Delcam systems in 1999 after Matra Datavision was taken over and new development of its software discontinued.

The company now has four seats of PowerShape and PowerMill, which are used to create all of its complex core, cavity and electrode designs and the associated machining programs.

Euroform specialises in rubber moulds for complex parts, which makes up 80% of its work.

Plastic injection moulds and the occasional blow mould make up the remainder.

The largest tool manufactured by the company was a plastic injection mould of over 5t to produce an interior trim component for Suzuki.

A similar percentage of Euroform's tooling is supplied to the automotive industry.

The great majority of its moulds are exported, principally to Germany.

However, many only leave for quality checks before being returned to manufacturing plants in Hungary.

Following a move in July 2003 to larger premises, Euroform now has 40 employees, including five CAM programmers and four CAD designers.

Its CNC machines are supervised over two shifts but run unmanned for the remainder of the day to give 24-hour machining when required.

Similarly, finishing toolpaths for larger parts are left to run unmanned over the weekends.

Despite its record of expansion and of technical development, Euroform is keen to grow further.

The company has recently added its first five-axis machine, a DMG DMU 60T, which is expected to generate business in new areas.

"With a spindle speed of 18,000rev/min, this isn't as fast as some of our other machines", commented Managing Director, Polcz Karoly.

"However, the table movement is quick so we can still operate at a high enough speed to take full advantage of the extra flexibility of the five-axis operation.

In addition to our toolmaking work, the five-axis capabilities will enable us to move into manufacturing of prototypes and short production runs".

Karoly is also keen for his company to be involved earlier in the design process.

"Designers often have good ideas but turning them into successful moulds isn't as easy as they think", he pointed out.

"If we can be involved early on, we can modify the design so that it can be made with a simpler, and cheaper mould.

We can also advise on changes that will make the mould operate more efficiently and so increase productivity on the moulding machine".

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