CKD corporation serves very dynamic markets, where sometimes customers demand massive shortenings of the lead time for the production lines – not in the range of 3% to 5 %, but in the range of 30% to 50%. As with other sections in the company, the machining section of the Automation machinery department is constantly investigating to improve the productivity. This section mainly manufactures components for backlight LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) production lines and precision parts for automatic packing machines. They have identified two areas for improvement: (i) the reduction of the machining time and (ii) the reduction of the CNC program preparation time. To reduce machining time, CKD replaced the old CNC machines by state-of the-art High-Speed CNC machine tool centers. These intelligent machines, from leading Japanese machine tool vendors, cover the whole production range from 2.5D to 5-axis indexed Milling to Turning and Turn-Mill applications. CKD found out that shortening of the preparation time, namely the time to generate NC toolpaths, is as important as shortening of the machining time. Since CKD manufactures a whole variety of different parts for the production lines, efficient CNC programming for each of the parts is key to minimize the overall system lead time. Formerly, the machining section worked with two different CAM systems, one for 2.5D machining and one for 3D machining. The reason was that the 2.5D CAM system was unable to create 3D tool paths, and the 3D CAM system was unsuitable to create 2.5D tool paths. So, they sometimes had to combine both CAM systems to create a single toolpath - a very time-consuming process.
To overcome these bottlenecks, CKD started in 2003 to install the first seat of SolidCAM+SolidWorks. SolidCAM is able to create excellent toolpaths in 2.5D as well as in 3D. Due to the seamless integration in SolidWorks, SolidCAM operates directly with the SolidWorks files, which are generated in CKD`s product design department. Thus no time is wasted to solve data translation problems. All geometries used for machining are fully associative with the design models. When the geometry of the machinery parts is modified, SolidCAM software enables the user to automatically synchronize all machining operations with the updated geometry. In addition, CKD corporation improved CAM efficiency by using the automation features of SolidCAM. Especially the use of automatic hole feature recognition and machining and the creation of machining process templates helps to reduce the CNC programming time.Due to the positive experience with the combined solution ”SolidWorks+SolidCAM”, CKD corporation has extended the CAD/CAM installation to 3 seats in the year 2005. Further seats are planned in the near future. Kenichi Nojima, manager of the machining section, stated: “We are confident, that SolidCAM continues to provide us with the best CAM solution, with an optimal balance between CAD integration, automation functions and machining flexibility.”
For more information on CDK corporation, visit the company website at http://www.ckd.co.jp/english/index.htm
