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The exhibitors ISBE and Third Wave Systems improve the efficacy of metal-cutting in a holistic approach, extending from tool development all the way through to the tool’s actual use in the production process.
“At first, we got pitying smiles”, recalls Dr.-Ing. Claus Itterheim, Managing Director of ISBE GmbH from Stuttgart, looking back to 2006, when he premiered his program for virtual tool design. The development manager of a machine tool manufacturer even said, it was “just a laughable business model” without any future whatsoever. Today, Claus Itterheim is gratified to note that the sceptics at this company have also begun some comparable development work. The Swabian company is meanwhile well-known on the tool scene and among the relevant users, thanks not least to its consultancy capabilities and its programs themed around tool development. Its specialities include simulation programs, which meanwhile, says Dr. Itterheim, are at many manufacturers a constituent part of their systematised tool development work.
Simulation does not replace humans
The encouraging message from Stuttgart is this: even the most ingenious simulation does not replace a smart employee. To quote Dr. Itterheim: “In Germany’s university scene, unfortunately, only a handful of people are researching metal-cutting, plus the relevant tools and their development, compared to all other technologies around.” These few experts also include his colleague Dr.-Ing. Kay Marschalkowski, who in March of this year reported from the development front at the 2nd ISBE User Conference in Dortmund.
“By factoring in physical process variables, we are able to simulate the stress between the tool and the workpiece during the metal-cutting process. On this basis, even complex 5-axis processes can be reliably optimised. A stress collective of this kind can also be used in further FEM analyses for investigating the clamping situation of a tool or component”, is one example described by the Head of the Tool Engineering Centre. “This means I can generate a database with relative accuracy, so as to provide the designer with guidelines for dimensioning and for optimising clamping devices or machinery structures. If you are thoroughly familiar with your metal-cutting processes, you see, you also have a good description of the important boundary conditions involved.”
Collaboration with a think tank in the USA
The Swabians owe insights of this kind to the simulation programs of their long-standing cooperation partner Third Wave Systems (TWS), Inc. in Minneapolis. “Some tool manufacturers from our customer base drew our attention to a software package called AdvantEdge from the USA , said to be very well suited for high-precision FEM simulation of metal-cutting processes”, recalls Dr. Itterheim. “Following some persuasive tests with our own data, we decided in 2088 to enter into an alliance with TWS.” Meanwhile, it’s not only this software that’s being used by ISBE’s customers: the Production Module, too, has proved most efficacious, used to optimise NC programs for milling and turning with the aid of a simulation also based on FEM data. Cross-frontier alliances of this kind are seen by Nick Shannon, Sales & Application Engineer at TWS, as an essential precondition for global engineering that “synergises the unique developments on the individual markets to form a holistic corporate capability”.
But where does simulation come up against its limits? Can everything really be precisely predicted and optimised in a virtual environment? “Metal-cutting is an extremely complex phenomenon, witadidas