Manufacturing Machinery World June 2018

NEWS NEWS NEWS
ALITECH RACES TO SUCCESS WITH ITC
As a subcontract motorsport machine shop,
Alitech Precision Ltd is a company that is
rapidly evolving and this is credit to its
aggressive investment programme,
enthusiasm and love for all things
motorsport.
Since its inception little over three years
ago, the Silverstone Company has purchased
three HAAS machining centres, OPEN
MIND CAM software, a simultaneous 5-axis
Spinner machining centre and cutting tools
from Industrial Tooling Corporation (ITC).
Like any subcontract business in its infancy,
the team at Alitech Precision has acquired its
machine tools and peripheral equipment
based on expert advice, trial and error,
conferring with customers and competitors
alike and personal experiences.
It is these factors among others that led
the Northamptonshire business to
implement hyperMILL CAM software, the
Spinner U-620 5-axis machine and solid
carbide cutting tools from ITC. Whilst the
‘design to manufacture’ subcontractor
utilises cutting tools from a variety of
suppliers, it is Tamworth based ITC that has
stood out for special tools and end mills for
machining steel components.
The relationship between Alitech and ITC
started just over 18 months ago when the
Alitech team encountered tool life and
performance issues with an existing tooling
vendor when machining steel. The Alitech
engineers were exercising a ‘trial and error’
process that was proving fruitless. Alitech
picked up the phone to ITC and local ITC
engineer Mr Gary Bambrick was
immediately on-hand to advise.
Despite the company name being a major
clue to the fact that Alitech primarily
undertakes aluminium machining, the
Motorsport Valley subby frequently
produces towing eyes for race cars and
bonding brackets for CFRP from EN24 steel.
Commenting upon the intervention of ITC,
Alitech Precision Senior 5-axis Programmer,
Mr Charlie Watts says: “The ITC engineer
came in and trialled the four flute 4081 Cyber
Series of solid carbide end mills. The results
were remarkable. After undertaking so many
trials with a multitude of cutting tool
suppliers, we were always going to be a little
sceptical of any tooling engineer that came
through the door. However, Gary Bambrick
offered a level of expertise and advice that
included intuitively optimising the speed
and feed parameters of the 4081 Series. This
delivered really impressive results.”
Since the initial trial success, Alitech has
now widely implemented the ITC 4081 Series
for steel jobs and titanium parts, purchasing
4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16 and 20mm diameter end
mills.
With regard to machining performance on
aluminium, Alitech is more than happy with
its existing vendors. However, when it came
to the profile machining of deep port pockets,
it was ITC that stepped up to the challenge
with its industry leading lollipop cutters. The
majority of projects undertaken by Alitech
involve the complex simultaneous 5-axis
machining of parts such as billet inlet
manifolds, valve seats, inlet port heads, billet
turbo manifolds and much more. Reaching
deep into ports is a complex challenge for the
machine tool kinematics, the CAM software,
the cutting tools and toolholding. At the
sharp edge is the ITC 4101 Series of lollipop
end mills that permit Alitech to reach
surfaces around corners and deep inside
manifold ports.
Tel: 01827 304500
sales@itc-ltd.co.uk
www.itc-ltd.co.uk
BEST-IN-CLASS RESULTS
Tests on the new nesting engine unveiled in
Alphacam 2018 R2 show a 17 per cent
improvement in material yield.
Using proprietary technology to deliver
what Brand Manager Hector Henry says are
“best-in-class geometry,” toolpath optimisation
and part handling, the nesting engine also
provides faster calculation times, along with
improved feedback and graphics.
And he says the overall theme of the latest
release is to save time and improve
productivity.
Parametric Rules have now been migrated
to C# and have an enhanced GUI and
functionality, allowing for greater control,
improved UX and simpler, more streamlined,
logic statements, which he says has improved
productivity and reliability.
The Face Milling Cycle has been enhanced,
and is now part of Alphacam’s Core
Functionality, creating intelligent toolpaths,
allowing user to face (surface) mill irregular and
multiple geometries. “This improves
productivity, as the user doesn’t need to create
several operations to achieve the same result.”
Productivity has also been improved
through the new Order by Intersecting
Geometry function which saves significant time
when ordering the sequence of a complex job. It
works by letting the user select a previously
created geometry to define the order of
geometries or toolpaths, based on those which
intersect the selected geometry first.
The Parametric Sketcher is now
considerably more powerful, thanks to an
updated UI, meaning the window can be
resized. “This provides greater visibility over
the Parameters and Actions list, which will be
essential for managing complex projects.” There
are also improvements to the Sketcher’s
geometry creation tools, for creating fillets and
chamfers as part of the Geometry creation tool
set. This improves productivity as it does away
with the need to calculate those points.
Enhancements to Alphacam’s dimensioning
system provide greater clarity when printing
and presenting information. User-defined
suffixes for both the primary and alternate units
– as well as a scale factor – mean that two
separate values can now be displayed.
Importing CAD models has been updated
through the support of SolidWorks
configurations. “Alphacam now has a new
interface for users to select which configuration
of an assembly to import, without the need to
ascertain that the last version saved in
SolidWorks matches the one they want,” says
Hector Henry.
www.Alphacam.com
6 Machinery World, June 2018