[step-manufacturing] Minutes of March 26 conference call

[Martin Hardwick]

Attendees
---------------
Alain Brail, Airbus, France
"Philippe Darnis, University of Bordeaux
Jean-bernard Hentz, Airbus
Fred Proctor, NIST
Bengt Olsson, Sandvik
Mikael Hedlind, KTH
Magnus Lundgren, KTH
Matthew Lloyd, CCAT
Martin Hardwick, STEP Tools, Inc.


Apologies for absence
--------------------------------
David Odendahl, Boeing
Leon Xu, Boeing
Mike Mcglauflin, NIST

The next meeting will be held a the Connecticut Center for Advanced 
Technologies (CCAT) in Hartford Connecticut on September 30th, 
October 1st and October 2nd. The first day of the meeting will be 
spent on dry runs for the demonstration day, the second day will be 
the demonstration day and the third day will be a committee meeting 
day. We will invite interested parties to the demonstration. The 
emphasis of the demonstration will be on the business advantages of 
using STEP-NC for machining.

There was a discussion on what business benefits should be 
demonstrated. The two most discussed possibilities were feed-speed 
optimization extended to include tool life and closed loop machining 
of an impeller or turbine blade part with on-machine measurement and 
correction.

For the tool life demonstration it was emphasized that the cost of 
the cutting tools is usually only a small percentage of the total 
cutting cost. Optimization using tool life should not focus on 
cutting the cost of the tools, but on making sensible use of the tool 
life to optimize the cost of the process. For example, if a tool has 
only 75% of its life left and a machining job will require 80% of the 
life of the tool, then the job should be slowed down so that it can 
be completed without having to load a new tool. Similarly if a tool 
has 80% of its life and the machining job requires 75% then the 
process can be sped up to require the whole 80% because no other 
process will be able to use the remaining 5%.

There was also agreement that the life of the tool should be measured 
as a percentage. Each application will be required to compute how 
much of the life it consumes. Guidance should be given so that 
applications can compute this percentage.

For the closed loop machining demonstration there was discussion on 
the best was to measure the machining and how to make the corrections 
for five axis machining. There was a discussion on tool deflection 
and how to predict tool deflection and why it is difficult to 
compensate for tool deflection in a CAM system. Sandvik made a model 
of an impeller available to the group. The model is smaller than 
usual so it can fit into a wider range of machines, but it has all of 
the features considered to be critical for this type of machining. 
The model has been put onto the new ftp site for the CCAT demo.

ftp://www.steptools.com/private/CCAT/

The machine tool model developed by the University of Bath has also 
been put onto the ftp site. The documentation includes a description, 
an EXPRESS model and a Part 21 file example for a DMU 50.


Action Items
------------------
Fred Proctor to contact Sid Venkatesh about an Impeller model 
developed by Boeing described in the literature.
Matt Lloyd to check to see if Biran Kindilien has been able to find 
impellor or turbine blade models that can be used in the demonstration
Fred Proctor to check for NIST expertise on tool deflection.
Martin Hardwick to make a new ftp site.