Delcam Software Helps Keep Nissan on Top
Delcam’s Power Solution Software

During the past few years, the Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. site in Sunderland, United Kingdom, has become renowned as the most productive car plant in Europe. To maintain the site’s high productivity, the technicians in the press die maintenance division use Delcam’s Power Solution software.

Currently, all press tools used in the Sunderland facility are supplied from Japan. It would be too expensive to return them to Japan for design modifications, so a numerical control facility was set up in Sunderland based around the Okuma MCR B II, a five-axis machine with a 5x2 m bed that uses Delcam software. Despite its size, the Okuma gives an incredible 2 µm accuracy.

The original investment justification was to allow more efficient repair of trimming tools and to reduce new model introduction time by completing detailed tool changes in the United Kingdom rather than in Japan. Previously, design changes and damaged cutting surfaces on the tools were built up by welding and then ground into shape by hand. “Now we have the technology to fully complete reverse engineering applications,” says Steve Easter of the press die maintenance division. “This makes it much easier to maintain the necessary accuracy we require.”

A profile is digitized from the trim line on the press tool by fitting a Renishaw probe onto the Okuma machine. The captured data are then used in a combination of Delcam’s CopyCAD reverse engineering software and the PowerSHAPE hybrid modeler to re-create the tool’s trimming edges. A model of the trim edges is then passed to the PowerMILL CAM system for the generation of machining data on the Okuma numerical control machine.

Initially with trim tools, the process was used simply to duplicate the manual operation in carrying out local repairs to each damaged area. More recently, it has been expanded to cover machining of all the welded sections and replacing the complete trimming edge. “Replacing the whole edge doesn’t take that much more time,” Easter says. “Plus it gives a much better result with a longer time between subsequent repairs.”

The next application to be developed was to replace sections in draw tools, especially where laser welding is used to join metal sheets of different grades. These areas wear more quickly because of the effects of the laser weld, so it’s necessary to replace them with harder material to extend the tool’s life. Again, surface data from the affected area are collected with the Renishaw probe. The replacement section is modeled with CopyCAD and

PowerSHAPE and then machined on the Okuma machine with toolpaths generated in PowerMILL.

The establishment of a new database developed by technicians, and containing PowerSHAPE models of the various press tools as they are repaired, has given additional benefits to Nissan’s quality process. If any inaccuracies are found in panels from a particular die set, the tool can be scanned and the results checked against the database. It’s quick and easy to see if the problem is with the die surface.

“The main reason for choosing Delcam was that I could get all three elements of the system--reverse engineering, modeling and machining--from a single source,” Easter says. “Other potential suppliers were offering a mixture of programs from different developers, which I thought could cause compatibility problems.

“As well as being better integrated, the Delcam systems were also user-friendly. The layout seemed to be very logical and this has proved to be the case. Even though we are only part-time users, we still get the excellent results we need.”

Delcam’s Power Solution Software

Benefits:

• Single source for reverse engineering, modeling and machining
• User-friendly with logical layouts

www.delcam.com