[step-manufacturing] Minutes of June 18th conference call

[Martin Hardwick]

Attendees
--------------
Martin Hardwick, STEP Tools, USA
David Loffredo, STEP Tools, USA
Bengt Olsson, Sandvik, Sweden
David Odendahl, Boeing, USA
Leon Xu, Boeing, USA
Bob Ericksson, Pratt & Whitney, USA
Christian Callet, Datakit, France
Alain Brail, Airbus (retired), France
Tom Raun, Iscar, USA
Jim Kosmala, Okuma, USA
Thanh Huynh, Okuma, USA
Bob Baldizzi, Okuma, USA
Paul Kingsley, Okuma, USA
Rod Tojdowski, Okuma, USA
Thanh Huynh, Okuma, USA
Vincent Marchetti, Ameritech, USA
Yin Lampard Zhang, University of Auckland, New Zealand

We discussed how to present  demonstration results to the audience. 
Holding a race where each contestant (process) is given five minutes of 
machining time is easy to understand. The potential danger is that the 
audience will forgot about the total picture including the cost of the 
tooling and the cost of the tool wear. This can be mitigated by the 
presenter (David Odendahl)  so the script is important.

Another danger is that a direct competition between the two tool vendors 
will put them under pressure to optimize speed at the expense of every 
other parameter. A strategy for avoiding this is to run the competition 
between the Boeing process and a single tool vendor process. For 
example, on Monday there could be a competition between Boeing and Iscar 
for the profiling, and between Boeing and Sandvik for the pocketing, and 
on Tuesday the competitions could be reversed.

In order to run these competitions we may need to fixture up to four 
copies of the part on the machine. We have 15 blanks so we will run out 
if we consume 4 per day. However, there are four pockets plus different 
stages to the profiling so we can run the competitions on different 
stages each day.

In the  v5_IMTS_HARDMODLY some of the pocketing operations are grouped: 
each is started together, then roughed together, and then finished 
together. This is standard practice because it saves time on tool 
changes. However, in STEP-NC the processing system can determine if a 
tool change is necessary between operations. Therefore, the grouped 
operations will be subdivided to give us the flexibility to pick and 
choose between the pockets for the different competitions.

A recording of the call is on the ftp site.
ftp://www.steptools.com/private/CAM_exchange/Cycle_4/stepmanuf_telecon_20140618.wmv

The next conference call will be held at the regular times on THURSDAY 
(not the regular day) June 26th.

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