Turkey's most advanced civil and
defence aerospace supplier, TIA
Industries, is being supported in many of
its manufacturing activities by software
systems from GTMA's CGTech.
TIA, from its 275,000 sq metre facility in
Ankara, provides national and international
skills and services to global aerospace companies. It has developed its skills and services
in strategic business units, including fixed
and rotor wing aircraft, aerostructure components and systems, UAV,
space and special programmes.
With nearly 5000 staff, it has made significant investment in machine tool technology
and its shopfloor is equipped with 'best in
class' machines for each task, with 3-, 4-
and 5-axis horizontal and vertical NC
machining centres. These cut materials
including aluminium, titanium and high
strength steel. High speed machining techniques are
used, with the latest HSM
machine tools - about 200 people are
machining components 24/7.
HIGH VARIETY PRODUCTION
Supporting the machine shop with all of its
manufacturing programs, the company runs
Catia and Siemens NX CAD/CAM software,
and sometimes Esprit CAM. Each has the
ability to do the work required by TAI, including 4- and 5-axis NC tool paths. "Ultimately,
the customer will choose the CAD/CAM
route, sometimes making the use of specific
software mandatory," says Onur Bahtiyar,
Leader, NC Programming Department.
His team create the manufacturing cutting
tool paths for the various machine tools,
and also support the tooling development
engineers who create the assembly fixtures
and tooling needed for sub system
production.
Low volume, high variety production means
the department typically is working on 150
projects for various customers and for its own
range of aircraft, which include the Hurkos
pilot trainer and T129 ATAK helicopter.
The NC department needs to initiate every
possible gain and this was part of the drive
that led to investment by TIA in CGTech's
NC simulation and verification software VERICUT.
Floating licences mean each PC can
run the simulation program.
"Before investing in VERICUT software the
NC programmer only knew the results of the
toolpath during the actual 'prove out' trial
run on the machine tool, " said NC Engineer,
Mete Koyuncu. It had to be done
very carefully, with reduced speeds and
feeds and was risky and time consuming.
Problems could include spindle or axes collisions on the machine/workholding and
gouging of the raw material.
"VERICUT simulation allows the prove-out
process to be done in a virtual environment
in the NC Programming Department," he
says now. "The G code NC program created
by the CAM system is taken into VERICUT
for verification. Although the first actual part
run will be done carefully most of the errors
will have been found using VERICUT and
corrected by the NC programming team.
We feel more confident now we use VERICUT and the machine operators also feel
more comfortable running the part knowing
it has successfully passed through
VERICUT."
TOOL SIMULATION
In fact, NC programs are only released to
the company's manufacturing network after
being successfully machined in VERICUT.
From here the operator can pull the 'safe NC
program' down to the machine tool's controller.
All fixturing and set up details are supplied by the NC programming
department
along with the comprehensive cutting tool
lists required to make the component.
Machining and VERICUT macros may also
be included with the production data.
VERICUT modules at TAI include 3-, 4- and
5-axis machine tool simulation, Auto Diff,
and also two seats of CGTech's OptiPath
optimisation software. This software is
applied to most new machine tools to
reduce the air cutting times, and if
OptiPath is applied to adjust the chip load it
reduces tool breakage and increases cutting tool life.
TAI also supports MRO (maintenance,
repair and overhaul) operations and the first
challenge is often finding the technical documents, and from
these creating a solid
model to work from. Sometimes it has to
reverse engineer the component, but
whichever method is used it will always use
VERICUT to prove the part.
GTMA AEROSPACE SUPPLIERS
12
GTMA
SUPPORT FOR AERO MACHINE SHOPS
CGTech SOFTWARE PACKAGE HELPS PRODUCTION FLOW
Top: VERICUT simulates the machining of
complex multi axis components used in aerospace
and, above, the F-16 Falcon - TIA has completed
significant enhancements to the Falcon for a
number of national airforce customers. Photos
courtesy TIA and CGTech.