Delcam, Röders and Mitsubishi Carbide Forge Close Relationships
Forgings manufacturer Stévenin-Nollevaux has created a
partnership with CADCAM developer Delcam, high-speed machining specialists
Röders and cutting tool suppliers Mitsubishi Carbide to develop and test
new high-speed strategies for forging die machining, in particular
trochoidal machining. The company has recently added a second Röders
high-speed machining centre, to be used partly for testing and benchmarking
by Röders, plus a second seat of Delcam’s PowerMILL CAM software.
Stévenin-Nollevaux produces drop forgings ranging from just
a few grams up to five kilograms. Founded in Les Ardennes in North-Eastern
France in 1927, this family-owned firm has grown to almost 100 employees and
has become established as a leading supplier to the automotive, heavy goods
vehicle, construction, agricultural and electrical engineering industries.
The company has also broadened its markets so that it now exports around
half its production, mainly to Germany and the United States but also to
other European and Far East countries. It has received certifications to ISO
9000 version 2000, ISO 14001 and TS 16949.
For most of the projects it undertakes, Stévenin-Nollevaux
start from customers’ drawings and designs, and provides a complete
service, including tooling manufacture, forging components, finish machining
and galvanising the parts, and, most recently, system assembly.
The company made its first move into high-speed machining in
October 1999 when a Röders RFM1000 machine and Delcam’s PowerMILL CAM
system were added. Simultaneously, the tooling department changed the way it
was organised so that shop-floor machining could be introduced. Typically,
the machine works 18 hours per day, six days a week cutting the extremely
hard chromium and molybdenum steels used for forge tools.
In November 2002, Stévenin-Nollevaux started
using Mitsubishi Carbide tools. It then became one
of the first French companies to experiment with trochoidal machining of
hardened tool steel. "The Mitsubishi tools have been particularly
successful for roughing," said the Manager of the tooling
process. "From the start, the tool life has been much longer
which makes a big difference to both our work organisation and our
costs."
"We must have manufactured over 200 forging tools since
the introduction of PowerMILL and have seen many benefits from using the
software," he explained. "The first advantage is the friendliness
of the user interface, which made the system very accessible for our
operators when we moved to shop-floor machining."
"PowerMILL offers many strategies developed
specifically for high-speed machining that give reduced wear and improved
life of cutting tools," he added. "In particular, the introduction
of Raceline Machining has doubled, or even tripled, tool life because of the
smoothness of the toolpaths."
"Most importantly, we are seeing a continual evolution
of the strategies to make us even more efficient. Delcam is a company that
listens to the needs of its users and produces software to meet our
expectations," he concluded.
