Inspection software improves machinery production
A
Delcam product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Jul 16, 2007
Concepts NREC is transforming the way turbomachinery is designed, prototyped and tested, using PowerInspect inspection software.
Thanks to the addition of a portable inspection system from CimCore and Delcam's PowerInspect inspection software, Concepts NREC is transforming the way turbomachinery is designed, prototyped and tested.
Concepts NREC is revitalising its Woburn, Massachusetts, operations to handle a larger number of more demanding turbine designs in less time.
The benefits show up throughout the Concepts NREC's product development process.
More and better inspection cuts the time and cost of measuring every surface of even the most complex designs.
That in turn is the key to verifying that a turbine meets all its critical design parameters.
The new approach to inspection is a key part of a significant revitalisation of this 55-year-old company.
Purchased in June 2006, the system immediately paid for itself by avoiding production errors that would have led to scrapping a pair of integrally cast and machined turbine wheels worth US $30,000 each.
On its second job, two weeks were cut out of the usual ten-week development cycle, allowing Concepts NREC to meet the delivery schedule for a customer.
"Inspections with the portable system are very quick, very accurate and very cost-effective", said Jeff Pfeiffer, Director of Business Development - Products and Services at Woburn.
"But the really big gain comes from not having to break set-ups on machine tools every time we need inspection data".
"When a machining set-up is broken, dozens of carefully calculated dimensional relationships between the fixture, the workpiece and the machine tool's speeds, feeds and cutter offsets are severed", explained Marty Heald, Shop Manager at the Product Center.
"Re-establishing them after an inspection takes more effort than the original set-up".
"A complete blade measurement requires nearly a thousand points", Heald said.
"Today, all this takes about four hours".
"For most of these measurements previously, we had to take single sets of data, make single measurements on our CMM, and manually plot them against the model in a CAD package".
"It took a complete day just to gather the data, and many more hours to plot and inspect the points against the model manually".
"One of the most useful features of PowerInspect is its ability to quickly align a CAD model with the actual part in 3D space", added Heald.
"This allows the part to be inspected anywhere, in any orientation".
The shift to the portable CMM and PowerInspect transformed inspection from a job requiring craftsmanship, patience and great skill, into standardised tasks that can be done by any machine operator after a few hours of training.
Less obvious but farther reaching is that Concepts NREC is able to detect problems before they occur, according to Heald.
"That saves our customers and ourselves a lot of grief".
"We can make quick checks during and after rough machining to see where the surfaces actually are, before we machine any further".
Heald also noted that customers and engineers are impressed by the inspection reports automatically generated by PowerInspect.
"Every job is different and the reports can be tailored to each one".
"The reports are clearer and much more detailed than anything we could do before, and we can insert a PowerInspect screen image anywhere we choose", he concluded.
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