Supporting its partners at the UK’s showpiece manufacturing event, the number of enquiries and orders was impressive across the three stands. The VLB Group demonstrated its tube manipulation technology whilst the Durma stand had the HD-F 3015 fibre laser, the AD-Servo 30175 hydraulic press brake and the AD-ES 1240 electric press brake with automated loading and unloading. On the Mastercam stand, ETG supported the CAM experts with a Nakamura turning centre that was running through machining cycles to emphasise the synergy between the industry-leading CAM suite and ETG’s industry benchmark turning brand from Japan. If you didn’t get an opportunity to make it to MACH, you can visit the ETG showroom in Wellesbourne to investigate these technologies in greater depth.

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ETG Ireland kicked off their ‘Decade of Innovation’ workshop series last month with an EDM Applications workshop on the 23rd of January, which was hosted by Scott Elsmere, ETG’s Product Manager and renowned expert on Mitsubishi EDM and OPS-Ingersoll product lines. The day was a huge success with a great turnout of customers from across Ireland and Northern Ireland. Scott covered a range of topics and this was supported by live demonstrations on a Mitsubishi MV1200R EDM machine, which was followed by an interactive Q&A session. From understanding the EDM process, and material types, improving part straightness, achieving better taper accuracy, modifications for coated wires and key parameters in spark erosion – the event was an informative and action-packed day.

The EDM workshop provided an opportunity for toolmakers and manufacturers from across the country to network and share their knowledge, learn new tips and tricks and also gain a deeper understanding of ETG Ireland and the remarkably wide and diverse support services. Many attendees said they would highly recommend the workshop to others. One attendee said: “I have been EDM wiring for over 20 years, and I have learned new things at the workshop that I can take back to the workplace.”

This event was the first instalment of ETG Ireland’s ‘Decade of Innovation’ series of workshops, and it will continue with a Mastercam 2024 workshop scheduled soon. For more information on the upcoming schedule of events, please contact ETG Ireland.

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Hosted by Connor Fletchmoore, ETG’s CIMCO Product Manager, Applications Engineer and International Sales Manager, the one-hour webinar will educate manufacturers on the latest features in the CIMCO Edit 2023 suite and the respective benefits. The informative course will also discuss the CIMCO Machine Simulation (NC Code Simulation) and how this suite can streamline programming and production with the latest product enhancements.

ETG’s CIMCO expert will also delve into CIMCO Verify, CIMCO Verify Machine Simulation (Post Settings and External Post) and CIMCO Edit Integration for Mastercam. With CIMCO Edit Verify for Mastercam, you can run a full stock simulation from start to finish in just a few seconds or faster, even on complex parts. Utilising the power of modern GPUs, you can even run the simulation in real-time at the highest quality and see the stock update as it happens. If you want to ramp up your programming and machining productivity and performance, you can register for the event here: https://engtechgroup.com/event/webinar-cimco-training/

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Shortly after the successful #EMO2023 in Hanover, the KAPP NILES group hosted an informative and collaborative representatives’ meeting at the beginning of October. Approximately 70 participants met for this event in Coburg, Germany, and there was a lively exchange with the international representatives. ETG Ireland’s Managing Director James Fletchmoore was on the ground to stay tuned in to the latest product updates.

KAPP NILES is a globally active group of companies with high-quality and economical solutions for the fine machining of gears and profiles and is a partner for companies in numerous industries in the areas of mobility, automation and energy. The perfect interaction of machine, tool, technology and measurement technology guarantees extremely precise machining with an accuracy of a thousandth of a millimeter.

ETG Product Specialist Mark Covill spoke at the conference sharing his skills and expertise with the group.

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Our technical engineer Brendan O Callaghan delivered a tailored training curriculum, covering Mill 2D, Mill 3D, and also some bespoke programming of customers parts. ETG Ireland is Ireland’s leading Mastercam training facilitator, with tutorials in continual development, and updated modules added for each release.

We offer a variety of customizable Mastercam training courses. Some examples of our courses are listed below:

• Mastercam Basics & 2-D Mill (3 days)
• Mastercam 3-D Mill Advanced (2 day)
• Mastercam Multiaxis (3 days)
• Mastercam Lathe (3 days)
• 2-D/3-D Solids (1 DAY)
• Mastercam Lathe Advanced (2 days)
• Mastercam Lathe for Mill Users (1 day)
• Mastercam Wire (1 day)

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Introducing Mastercam

Colm Taylor is a Staff Manufacturing Engineer at Verus. With a background in toolmaking, Colm joined Verus in October 2017. At the time, Verus was operating as an in-house metrology manufacturer, completing metrology jobs for

other clients. They realised, due to increased demand, they needed to adapt and come up with a way of fixturing components so they could be measured. Verus began designing and manufacturing fixtures with the help of subcontractors, and in 2017, they started manufacturing these fixtures in house.

Soon, Verus saw further increased demand for these services. Colm had been using Mastercam version 7 in his previous role, an older and more outdated version of Mastercam. He had a good knowledge of Mastercam but knew it had advanced a lot in recent versions. Upon joining Verus, he was consulted on which software package would be most beneficial to Verus’ process, and Colm immediately knew Mastercam was the right option.

The team introduced Mastercam with just one seat, which Colm and his colleague Simon shared. “It was only when we got that first Mastercam seat we realised how slow we had been going,” he says. Their first setup had two milling machines and didn’t even have a table to hold the cutters. Having to take turns on the one seat, Colm and Simon quickly realised their increased productivity was so rapid, they were now holding each other up! Colm approached the board for additional Mastercam seats and machines. With a clear understanding of the benefits this would bring to the whole shopfloor, the board supported the investment, and as each new engineer joined Verus, a need for a Mastercam seat came with them.

Training investment

Starting with two VM10 Hurco machines and a TM6 Hurco Lathe, the Verus team began manufacturing using methods and processes they learned from using the older Mastercam version. Quickly realising they were not using Mastercam to its fullest potential, they reached out to ETG Ireland for Mastercam training.

The training was done in-house on Verus’ site, which Colm found to be extremely beneficial. Verus’ engineers were able to show ETG’s Mastercam trainers exactly what parts and machines they were working on and then prove out parts on their own machines. Colm showed our ETG Engineer what the team was machining and was told the task could be completed in less than 10 minutes – as opposed to an hour or more – with the help of dynamic roughing. “I was unsure if the cutter would break when it went down and began roughing!” he admits, but the part was made with ease, and it was clear how Mastercam was going to revolutionise Verus’ process.

Prior to trainin

g, the Verus team was manufacturing 400mm squared base plates with a pocket taken out of it. Roughing this pocket format was taking the team two hours, but with the help of ETG’s Mastercam training, the whole plate was completed in under two hours. “The process of dynamic milling was a real eye-opener to what can be done in such a short period of time,” Colm adds. “We couldn’t believe the increase in productivity. It was frustrating to realise the losses we’d incurred from not utilising Mastercam sooner, but the training courses have given us the skills and knowledge to leverage Mastercam to our own advantage and supercharge our processes.”

Everyone on the floor uses dynamic roughing, and sometimes Mastercam OptiRough in certain scenarios. A lot of the engineers use the same Mastercam features most of the time, but Colm says they each have their own personal taste as to how they like to machine and what Mastercam solution work best for them. “When doing 3D modelling, some engineers find a hybrid to be better than a flowline or scallops,” she shares. In general, however, they stick to the same soluti

ons. “The work we do is not link toolmaking, in the sense that we are not as tied to tolerances as a toolmaker would be. This work is a bit more forgiving, and we can stick to the same processes a lot of the time,” he says.

Smooth onboarding

Verus precision now operates nine Mastercam seats, 11 Hurco milling machines, and a lathe. Each person on the shop floor is running on average two mills. On the day we chatted, Colm noted he was actually running three machines just to keep up with demand, which has grown exponentially in recent years.

ETG Technical engineer Brendan O’Callaghan regularly provides Verus with training courses in line with each new Mastercam release. Regular training ensures the team is always up to date on the latest advancements, which bring with them better and faster ways of operating

and importing controls. “They may only seem small [changes], but they speed things up hugely,” says Colm.

Verus standardises their process as much as possible, bringing in contours from previous jobs to save time and reduce errors. The fixtures they produce are 95% aluminium, and so can be machined very quickly. When comparing his process from before they had Mastercam, Colm says: “the difference is like day to night, and a huge step forward from where we were”.

Growth culture

Verus partners with ETG Ireland to deliver Mastercam training to their new engineers as they join. New engineers are set up with a buddy whom they shadow on the shopfloor. Every day they find new ways to increase output, and if an engineer finds a faster or more efficient way of doing something, they share this with the whole team.

A subcontracting firm that Verus had been working with was using Mastercam and Colm was impressed at the speed with which they could machine fixtures. “We could see what they were doing (with Mastercam) and the pace they were doing it at,” he says. Colm liaised with the firm, who were only too happy to share their insights into the power of Mastercam.

The nature of the work Verus does moves very fast, and they are constantly innovating. In terms of manufacturing fixtures, they could have a 16 or 24 station fixtures completed in a number of days. In the last 2-3 years, due to further standardisation of their processes, they have managed to keep 95% more of their manufacturing in house, so they can take a lot “off the shelf”.

When asked about plans for the future, Colm says they are trying to figure out how to add another machine or two to their shop floor. “We’ve gone from having so much space to wondering where we could possibly fit in another machine!” he laughs.

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The Nakamura SC100X2

With more than 38 machine tools on the shop floor, the Shannon based company frequently works on high-profile projects for Airbus, Lear, Bombardier, Collins Aerospace, Liebherr, Safran, Spirit, Ametek and many other leading names in the aerospace, automotive, offshore, rail and power generation sectors. To meet the stringent quality levels the company sets, it has recently invested in two Nakamura-Tome mill/turn centres from ETG, the WT150II and the SC100X2.

The 80 employee manufacturer puts the stability and performance of its machine tools of paramount importance. With the company winning a significant automotive contract and a major contract in the aerospace sector, SPE needed a new strategy in its mill/turn department.

Recalling the situation, Dominic Murphy, the Managing Director at SPE says: “On some projects, we have been struggling with repeatability when machining particularly difficult materials. We won a contract to machine electro-mechanical connections for the aerospace industry from nitronic 40 and titanium, and we needed to be very responsive with our changeovers and lead times.
With regular batches from 200 to 500 and up to 20 different part families in the series, the project has some very ambitious cycle time targets with tolerances of +/-5 and +/-10µm on many features. We didn’t want to be chasing tolerances – we needed a more robust process.”

It was the Nakamura WT150II that won the day with cycle times more than 20% faster than its rivals. “We gave ETG and other vendors a series of components as a prove-out. ETG built a machine set up around the family of components and they delivered a turnkey solution that was best suited to our requirements. Unlike many machine tool brands, Nakamura is a specialist in mill/turn centres, their pedigree stands out.”

The next level

With the success of the Nakamura WT150II proven, ETG Ireland Managing Director Jamie Fletchmore was visiting SPE and Dominic mentioned an extremely complex automotive part that required machining on three machine tools – a 4-axis HMC and two single-spindle turning centres. With an annual output of 40,000 units, the steel-forged automotive tensioning assembly component is permanently absorbing the capacity of all three machines. The solution suggested by Jamie was the Nakamura-Tome SC100X2.

The ETG Ireland team with Spe and MTDCNC

Discussing the project, Jamie says: “We were notified that other machine tool companies said the part could not be machined in one-hit. When I first saw the part, I was trying to think of ways that we could machine the job in one operation. I took inspiration from the technology from Nakamura – and also the art of Japanese origami. I wouldn’t accept that the part could not be machined in one hit, so I conducted my own origami project in the office where I took a sheet of paper and started tearing strips on the paper and folding it to get an impression of the particular part and how it might work. I moved the paper around my hands to replicate the spindles and how target points could be put on the centreline. Once I understood this in my head, I went back to Nakamura, they worked out a plan and the component is now used as one of their sales tools to demonstrate how this type of complex part can be produced on a Nakamura machine.”

Confirming Jamie’s comments, Dominic adds: “We’ve run this family of parts for more than 2 years and we have investigated the market for a solution on numerous occasions – without success. There just hasn’t been a machine on the market that can do the parts in ‘one hit’ – until now. The challenges have included the turning of two spigots on either side of the part that are 40-50mm off-centre. Added to this, we have to mill features that require long-reach tools to overcome interfering features.”

The solution

To explain how the part is machined on the Nakamura-Tome SC100X2, Jamie says: “Once we determined that we could handle this part inside the machine in one operation complete, the next challenge was workholding. Workholding is so fundamental to the process and we knew that if we didn’t get good clamping and repeatability, the project wasn’t going to work. We went to the workholding manufacturers and developed the solution. So, what we have on the left spindle is an offset three-jaw chuck with hard gripper jaws that have been designed so the part sits off centre – this means the main spigot is sitting on centreline.”

With forgings known to be inherently inconsistent in their precision, ETG Ireland developed yet another solution for this challenge. As Jamie states: “Inside each of the chuck jaws are two inserts with teeth that are both independent and rock. With the independent teeth and the rocking motion, this counteracts the inconsistency of the forging, as the teeth provide six points of clamping contact that is even – every time we clamp.”

The challenging automotive components now produced on the Nakamura SC100X2

With a long spigot and groove turning on the face of the component, ETG was faced with yet another challenge. Discussing this, Jamie continues: “Overcoming this issue was largely down to the tooling. Once again, we had to do some work on the design with some trial and error on how to overcome the overhang. We put a small tool in a thin toolholder that would run from the driven tool station. The holder takes up the bulk of the 8mm diameter end mill and it has been designed for us to get as close to the shaft as we can to create the internal groove form. The benefit of completing the part in one operation with all turning, milling and synchronisation between the two spindles was that the milling time became less important – as we have saved time in other areas. Overall, we have saved 50% cycle time on this part alone. When that is multiplied by the quantities required, the saving is significant.”

Looking at the sub-spindle processes, Jamie adds: “What we had to do on the sub-spindle with the offset was use the ability of the X-axis on the sub-spindle, as it has its own axis. This allowed us to move the sub-spindle down to position. Once again, this came down to a specialised clamping design on the sub-spindle. We picked the part up ‘off-set’, so when it is transferred to the
sub-spindle, we then brought the X-axis back to 0, so the second operation spigot would be running on the centreline. This meant we could do a full operation and transfer eccentrically to the sub-spindle – giving us the ability to complete the part in one hit.
We also have superimposed machining to further reduce the cycle times.”

Taking Turnkey to Another Level

The off-centre clamping turning of the automotive part on the Nakamura SC100X2

With the ability to machine components that other machine tool vendors said could not be done in a single operation, ETG more than proved its pedigree. As Jamie continues: “We completed this project at the ETG base in Wellesbourne. Once we had the concept, our engineers proved out the parts and the process. Another cycle time saving arrived from the lower turret, where we have a fixed head on the left-hand side. We were able to synchronise machining to further optimise the cycle time by using the superimposed turning in conjunction with the synchronised. That means that if we are tracking on the top turret and then want to come down to do independent machining, we can use the lower turret where the sub-spindle will work independently on the lower turret. This gives us the best cycle time solution.”

Alluding to this, Dominic adds: “There just hasn’t been a machine on the market that can do the parts in ‘one hit’ – until now. The challenges have included the turning of two spindles on either side of the part that is 40-50mm off-centre. Added to this, we have to mill features that require long-reach tools to overcome interfering features. ETG has overcome these issues with the SC100X2. ETG has also cut the cycle time by almost 50% from 14 minutes to 7.26, but more importantly, the Nakamura-Tome SC100X2 has freed the capacity of two single spindle turning centres and a 4-axis HMC whose capacity we desperately needed. We’ve reclaimed three machines and two employees and massively improved our throughput. We are delighted with both the new Nakamura-Tome machines.”

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Longford-based N&E Precision Ltd previously acknowledged a requirement for EDM technology to complement its extensive CNC machine shop facilities and bought its first EDM machine from the Engineering Technology Group (ETG) in September 2019 – this has now been followed by more machines. The subcontract manufacturer invested in its first Mitsubishi wire EDM machine in 2019 and during the pandemic, they purchased a second Mitsubishi machine. Now, a third machine has followed.

Located between Galway and Dublin, the business that was founded in 2005, produces components for the aerospace, oil and gas, medical, pharmaceutical, and general engineering sectors. N&E Precision manufactures specialist precision parts from materials such as HSS and tungsten carbide as well as the frequently regarded ‘challenging materials.

The ISO:9001 and AS:9100 certified company was subcontracting a considerable amount of work out to local companies to undertake EDM machining. To reduce costs and improve control over its processes and lead times, N&E Precision hit the aisles at MACH 2018 to investigate the EDM market.

Following a comprehensive review of the market and recommendations from other local businesses, Joint Managing Directors Noel and Eamon Farrell at N&E opted for a Mitsubishi MV2400R wire EDM with an EKO Ioniser system. With the first Mitsubishi MV2400R making such an impact, the company invested in a second machine, a Mitsubishi MV1200R in 2020. This has now been expanded upon with the arrival of another Mitsubishi MV1200R, purchased at the recent GTMA Manufacturing Solutions show.

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Duggan Systems were finding it tough to obtain the components they needed, so they wanted to do as much in-house machining as possible. The ultimate goal was to bring down their costs and maintain control of production.

Having already seen a Vulcan machine in action, Duggan Systems were further convinced that their VMC was the right choice because of its bed size, direct-drive and value for money. Duggan chose ETG to buy from as they’d already established a connection with us and knew that we offer the convenience of everything under one roof.

Production manager, Dominykas Rolskis, was delighted with Vulcan’s specification for the price paid. He’s also been impressed with the quality of ETG’s service and training.

Training was vital for Duggan because they had no prior knowledge of machining; once ETG established this, they organised training effectively to suit their needs. Dominykas said that ETG made his team feel very welcome.

Now, armed with their training and new VMC, Duggan Systems can manufacture in-house more cost-effectively.

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They turned to ETG due to our backup service and the technical support we provide our clients. The optimised package deal available with the Nakamura-Tome machine sealed the deal.

Upon delivery, ETG helped install and program the WT 150 II, which was greatly appreciated. Shannon Precision Engineering was pleased with the ease of set-up and the advanced CNC control features on NT Smart X. Plus, they benefitted from monitoring all current situations whilst turning.

Thanks to their purchase, they have significantly decreased their cycle times, but at the same time, they have radically increased the accuracy of the parts being produced. Previously, they were manufacturing parts on two machines, which took 15 mins but now, with the Twin Turret Machine, the cycle time has dropped to 4.5 mins.

As a result, the Nakamura-Tome allows Shannon Precision Engineering to produce far more efficiently and accurately.

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