China auto company upgrades CADCAM

Following benchmark trials, largest automotive producer in China upgrades CADCAM software to improve competitiveness and increase productivity.

Following the recent installation of additional seats of Delcam's Powershape CAD software and Powermill CAM system, China First Auto Works (FAW) has become the company's largest customer in China.

FAW is the largest producer in China's automotive industry.

The annual output exceeded one million units in 2004, including cars, buses and small and large lorries.

It is one of the ten top corporations in China with 129,000 employees.

The group incorporates joint venture companies, such as FAW Volkswagen and Tianjin FAW - Toyota Automotive.

It was one of the first Chinese companies to adopt CADCAM technology and has tried most of the leading systems.

However, the combination of the functionality in Powermill and support from the local reseller, Changchun Delcam, lead to the Delcam software being chosen.

More than 95% of CAM programming within the group is now undertaken with Powermill.

One of the more recent parts of the group to add Delcam systems is FAW Die Manufacturing, the largest specialist producer of press tools in China.

The company decided that, with the expansion of its business, it needed to move to different software to improve its competitiveness and raise production efficiency.

An investigation was undertaken of the leading software, with a full-scale benchmark completed to demonstrate each of the systems' functionality and efficiency.

Changchun Delcam based its demonstration on the creation of a duplicate tool for the side panel of the Volkswagen Jetta car.

The tool was produced in a shorter time and gave the best quality of surface machining.

FAW Director Sui Zhihua said: "Compared with the results from our previous systems, since using Delcam software, our programming efficiency has improved by over 50%, our machining productivity has increased by over 30%, and the average life time of our cutting tools has grown by over 30%".

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