Ron Patlian, manufacturing manager for aerospace job shop Turbine Engine Components Textron (TECT, Santa Fe Springs, CA), was looking for a cost-effective CNC solution that wouldn't tie his plant to a traditional proprietary system. With a busy shop producing thousands of parts each year, Patlian needed to increase the shop's manufacturing capacity without spending from $500,000 to $2 million each for new machine tools.

Tired of having production stopped by obsolete and expensive-to-repair proprietary NC controts plagued by frequent breakdowns, Patlian needed a different kind of control, one without constraints on memory, program manipulation, and availability of repair parts. The control would have to be simple and easy to install, operate, and maintain.

What Patlian found was OpenCNC software, an unbundled, all-software CNC package from Manufacturing Data Systems Inc. (MDSI, Ann Arbor, MI) that could not only handle the demands of complex, five-axis aerospace machine tools, but also help cut cycle times and increase uptime. With MDSI's software, overall machine performance greatly improved, and Patlian recently set up a plan to upgrade several other five-axis machines that currently use older controls.

After installing MDSI's OpenCNC on a dual-spindle Rigid five-axis mill and a Sundstrand five-axis Omnimi1 machine, Patlian discovered significant productivity improvements. With the software, Pathan and his crew realized they could increased manufacturing capacity at a significant savings and reduce cycle times. The team also was able to link a string of machine tools on a network for remote diagnostics, DNC, and data collection. In addition, they freed up an aging fleet of NC machines from obsolete proprietary controls, so they could manage them the way they wanted to.

Patlian actually didn't know he was looking for a software CNC when he first began searching the Internet, but he knew that he wanted a better alternative than a traditional CNC. "I didn't want to be tied to a proprietary product, so I started surfing the Internet and came across MDSI's Web site," Patlian recalls. "Once I saw it, I knew that was what I had been looking for.

"The great thing about the MDSI control is that you can install it yourself [or have a local electrician help] and you're not tied to anyone's product," he adds. "It gives you the freedom to customize at a modest cost with the flexibility of Windows NT running on a 45-MHz PC."

TECT is an independent job shop for production-critical, gas turbine engine, and airframe components. Typical projects include machining centrifugal compressor parts for helicopter engines, locomotive turbocharger compressor wheels, and parts for commercial airplanes and jet attack fighters. Machining compressor rotors for fighter planes presented a major test for OpenCNC on two five-axis Omnimils. Each part cost up to $65,000 in value added and took several weeks to machine, so scrap was not an option.

"We gave OpenCNC a try and it delivered smooth continuous fiveaxis motion from the very start," Patlian says. "We do some very critical five-axis contouring and our machines need to perform right at the peak. MDSI delivered the servo control that worked."

By choosing the all-software OpenCNC, Patlian solved several problems at once. First, the switch increased the shop's capacity due to improved machine performance. If a machine tool runs 12 months a year when it only used to run 10-11 months due to electronic failures, manufacturing capacity is increased. In addition, several machine tools began running faster and better with OpenCNC. For example, a Rigid five-axis mill with OpenCNC ran nearly 50% faster than it did with a previous control. 

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