August 2007 Edition

CAD/CAM

Profiting Like Cats and Dogs

Using a new CAM system let a manufacturer turn one-off cats-and-dogs work into a profit center

While the old adage “A poor workman blames his tools,” the obverse is that without the right tools, a good workman can’t excel. A shop that once turned away one-off work because it lost confidence in its CAM package, found a solution that let it pick up custom business and turn a profit.

Bimba Manufacturing Co., Monee, IL, primarily produces pneumatic and hydraulic systems. Manifolds and valve bodies are blocks of steel, aluminum, engineered plastics, or other materials with dozens of intersecting holes drilled or bored into, or through them. Manifolds control fluid flows into and out of systems. Valve bodies contain all the moving parts, the rods and cylinders common to every fluid-power system.

Bimba created a thriving new business with jobs it once turned away. These jobs include specially-machined valve bodies and manifolds for unusual applications. Most of the work started as prototypes and sample parts and developed into production runs once the samples were approved. In prototypes and sample parts, responsiveness and quality were its keys to success.

Orphan

Bimba turned away jobs because its previous CAM system, an orphaned package, was unsupported by its original developer. Without support, the company lacked the confidence in manufacturing software capabilities. In turn, its lack of assurance in its software fostered a reluctance to take business risks on complex jobs with lots of design changes.

Most manufacturers face requests for what looks to be uneconomic special jobs. Often these come from valued customers developing new products. These requests are known as “cats-and-dogs” because producing them disrupts the smooth and profitable flow of high-volume production.

Globalization, plus the manufacturing slump that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, changed North American manufacturing. Companies found an increasingly competitive marketplace. Taking a fresh look at cats-and-dogs, Bimba saw them as a business opportunity. A growth strategy for the firm focused on strengthening the capabilities required to exploit the cats-and-dogs.

Spinoff

Bimba spun off a new group, based in Monee, IL, south of Chicago, known as the Custom Specials Shop – CSS. In two years, with a handful of people and two new Haas CNC machine tools, it generated more than $2 million in revenue.

“What made this possible,” Brian Kadow, CSS manager, said “is EdgeCAM software.” EdgeCAM is CAM software from Pathtrace Systems Inc., Southfield, MI.

“Speed-wise, EdgeCAM gives us a competitive advantage,” Kadow said. “All the CSS jobs were profitable and about half of the work developed into new production.

“We can now say ‘yes’ when a customer asks to tap into our design skills and expertise in pneumatics and hydraulics,” Kadow said.

“The business opportunity was always there,” William Kokum, Bimba marketing director, said. “Customers came to us with their cats-and-dogs because they knew our reputation would enhance their business. Helping customers create innovative products makes them more competitive. That’s what keeps jobs in America.”

“EdgeCAM makes it work,” Kadow said.

Historically, Bimba supplied customers with a variety of custom and special cylinders. But, those were variants of regular production and were machined just by changing a few parameters and dimensions.

“Those were not the problem,” Kadow explained. “Problems arose when customers wanted radically different products, and our trying to fit them into regular production.”

The CSS division of Bimba has met success with cat-and-dogs such as

• blood platelet counters for a medical instrument supplier. The counter has dozens of small-diameter holes and pockets, each with an electric switch to close it after the pocket fills. It is a manifold with an attached set of valve bodies in a staggered array;
• scissors-type form tools for cutting carbon-composite fiber tapes used in large aircraft structural components. These cutters were machined from a phosphor-bronze alloy. Critical parts were machined to 0.0005" tolerances;
• special cylinders for a fast-food chain that automated French fry production; and
• components for natural-gas production systems to capture and separate liquid condensates that come up with the gas.

All these became moneymakersfor Bimba.

A few years ago, before EdgeCAM, these jobs would have been dismissed by Bimba as money-losers that would disrupt production and distract shop management.

“They were probably inaccurately bid, too,” Kadow said.

Low Volume Leads to Profits

To address this, Bimba organized CSS in 2002. Low-volume specials were shifted out of regular production and into the shop set up to handle them efficiently. One difference at CSS is offline CAM programming, nearly all of which Kadow handles himself.

Bimba produces valve bodies and manifolds whose differences were only in the dimensions, numbers and locations of holes, and changes in holes’ intersecting angles. These jobs were programmed manually, at the machine – A-T-M – on the machine tools’ CNC units, but not at CSS.

“In A-T-M programming for a manifold there might be 50 holes, some blind, some through, many intersecting, several different diameters, some tapped, and some not,” Kadow said.

“That meant typing in ‘X-this’ 50 times and ‘Y-that’ another 50. Then the programmer had to add specific tools and feeds and speeds. It was a nightmare.”

“The previous CAM package forced us to open a new window for each hole we programmed,” he said. “Opening windows for 20 or 30 holes, it’s very easy to lose your place in the program. With EdgeCAM we never lose our place. For me, this is priceless.”

The prototype and sample-part work was too complex for A-T-M programming. Customers wanted valve bodies and manifolds to combine unique, new, and often proprietary processes with fluid-power actuation in asingle, complex component. Many of these parts also have modified rods and cylinders. Nevertheless, the geometry of most CSS parts is simple, even if the finished part is functionally very complex.

Attaining Simplicity

Simplicity can be difficult. At CSS, simplification dictated a new machining approach that broke even the most complicated designs into easily-machined components. This draws heavily on Kadow’s ingenuity plus the skills he’s acquired in 11 years at Bimba. Much of the CSS work begins with EdgeCAM in its feature-finding mode.

“Our old CAM software tied our hands,” Kadow said. “It was slow to program, slow to machine, and buggy. Worse, it had almost no simulation capabilities beyond dry runs. They are too slow for small-batch jobs. EdgeCAM gives us accuracy of programming, speedy machining, and accuracy of simulation. We never had those before.” Pathtrace Systems, Inc.

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