Imagine what a saving of up to 90% in milling cycle times would do for the productivity and profitability of your business. This was among the improvements demonstrated by OPEN MIND Technologies and Quickgrind at their joint hyperDAYS events in June, through which the partners heralded ‘a new dawn of milling innovation’.
The CNC software company and the carbide cutting tool manufacturer demonstrated their latest high performance cutting (HPC) results, including a 58% average reduction in machining time, along with extension of tool life by up to 300%. Particularly impressive were the improvements observed when dealing with challenging materials like titanium.
CNC manufacturer Mazak’s European headquarters in Worcester provided an appropriate venue for hyperDAYS, which engineering and manufacturing companies were invited to attend on 10th or 11th June. Representatives from industries including mould and die, aerospace, motor sport and automotive, for which the partners’ technological advances are especially beneficial, were among the targeted audience.
Billed as a knowledge transfer seminar, hyperDAY featured live cutting demonstrations so attendees could see for themselves the combined effect of OPEN MIND’s new machining strategies, as embodied in hyperMILL 2015, and Quickgrind’s new cutting tool geometries. Mazak provided one of its Integrex i400 machines for the purpose.
Peter Malecki, Quickgrind’s UK sales manager, said: “Quickgrind’s cutting tool capabilities are one of the best kept secrets in the UK. We are well-known internationally – and respected by partners such as OPEN MIND – for our expertise, our unique approach and the quality of our innovative products. Putting that together with the knowledge and experience of OPEN MIND, which is famed for its fully integrated and forward-thinking CAM strategies, notably in relation to 5 axis applications and milling, we have the perfect recipe for generating innovation and driving engineering performance forward. Our audiences at hyperDAYS have now seen this innovation in action.”
Speaking on behalf of OPEN MIND, UK managing director Adrian Smith said: “There has been a lot of buzz in the industry around high speed roughing, but as that only makes up about 30% of the cutting work we must avoid losing our focus on finishing. In partnership with Quickgrind we have pushed this forward and performance-tuned it using the right cutting angles and some of the very latest cutting tool geometry. The new ‘conical barrel’ tool, which is drastically cutting cycle times, is great example of the tool advances being made in collaboration.”
He added: “It’s worth emphasising that the innovations resulting from our joint efforts can be used on both state-of-the-art machinery and on some of the oldest machines still in operation. Our partnership work with Quickgrind is about finding ground-breaking solutions which are practical – taking into account customers’ applications, equipment and circumstances – and which will give UK companies the competitive advantage they need to achieve their business goals.”
Reflecting on the success of Quickgrind’s venture with OPEN MIND, managing director Ross Howell concluded: “Whether looking at the software, the machinery or the tools, our close partnership has constantly focused on making sure the resulting solutions are easy to implement and easy for customers to use. The benefits we are bringing to customers by working as partners illustrates the importance of collaboration in furthering our great British engineering heritage.”
