Case Histories of Manufacturing Problem Solving Advanced …€¦ · peaks down to 5 [microinches]...

June 2014 | ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com 39

Dart Machinery (Troy, MI) is a world leader in manufac-

turing engine blocks for racing and high performance

enthusiasts, as well as replacement blocks for a variety

of Detroit V-8 engines. Dart uses the SV-20

advanced flexible honing system from Sun-

nen Products Co. (St. Louis) to “master the

peaks and valleys” in honing cylinder bores

to produce custom results with near-mass

production efficiency.

“Advanced honing provides a key differen-

tiator for maintaining a competitive advantage

and achieving greater efficiencies and flexibility

in processing an ever-changing mix of blocks,”

said Dick Maskin, Dart founder and president.

“A new SV-20 honing system from Sunnen

enables high-precision, highly-flexible honing

of a wide range of block designs and metallur-

gies in a single continuous process without the

need for stone change,” Mastin said. Ameri-

can-made in St. Louis, the SV-20 replaces a

more expensive, European-built honing system that “just wasn’t

a good fit for our production, not flexible enough,” he said.

Maskin started Dart in 1981 in a two-car garage in Oak

Park, a Detroit suburb, and has grown it into the leader in

manufacturing racing and high-performance engine blocks,

heads and other components. The company does its part to

keep Detroit “Motor City” with both a technology center and

manufacturing facility located in the metro area. Today, 95

Dart employees make about 8000 blocks and 16,000 heads a

year for drag racing, circle track racing, road racing, and high-

performance custom cars, as well as marine and industrial

power applications.

The manufacturing facility operates three shifts, six or seven

days a week depending on production volume, with 26 large

Makino CNC machining centers churning out blocks, heads

and manifolds. Customers can choose between seven different

base block designs covering big block and small block sizes, all

evolved from NHRA pro stock V-8 experience. “That’s where all

the technology comes from,” said Maskin, whose own engine

creations achieved drag-racing’s first 300 mph quarter-mile run

and four-second Funny Car elapsed time.

“We produce custom in volume,” said Maskin. Blocks

are manufactured to customer order in type and material,

bore spacing, cam location, bolt pattern, deck height, lifter

location, oil pan bolt pattern, metric or US dimensions—“just

infinite variation and specialization.” Dart makes blocks in

various grades of iron (cast iron to CGI) and in aluminum with

Advanced Honing Masters Engine’s Peaks and Valleys

Dart Machinery technician Bob Dimitrijevich installs iron sleeves in a cast

aluminum block while a billet aluminum racing block awaits installation. Alu-

minum block bores are honed for size and geometry before liner installation.

ShopSolutionsCase Histories of Manufacturing Problem Solving

Once you understand the finish you need from honing—and we know these numbers now thanks to profilometers—you can make the bad blocks good, too.

iron-sleeved cylinder bores, including blocks machined from

forged and heat-treated aluminum billets.

Dart combines two advanced technologies—diamond hon-

ing abrasives driven with a programmable spindle, followed

by profilometers to measure the peaks and valleys of cylin-

der surface finishes—to replicate “best” block finishes and

ring seal. “Experienced racers have always had their favorite

blocks, ones that ran better than others,” said Maskin.

“We’ve learned through experience that it wasn’t the

block that made the difference, but how your honing process

worked for that exact block, since similar blocks might pro-

duce much less horsepower. Once you understand the finish

you need from honing—and we know these numbers now

thanks to profilometers—you can make the bad blocks good,

too. We use honing to achieve the ideal Rvk [valley depth

average], Rpk [peak height average], Rk [core roughness

depth], and crosshatch to finish a block for a given applica-

tion,” Maskin said.

Knowing the desired result, the honing process can be

tweaked to achieve the result in any block. “If you go from a

200 brinnel block of cast iron to a much tougher CGI [com-

pacted graphite iron] block, you need to know how to achieve

your finish numbers in the different

materials,” said Maskin. “Finishes also

must account for the type of fuel burned

in the engine, which could be alcohol or

natural gas.”

“Honing is all about sealing the

rings to the cylinder wall,” said Maskin.

“The key is valley depth. Too deep and

you have too much oil in it, slowing the

engine down with friction. Too little val-

ley, and the rings can hydroplane across

the valleys and you lose seal. Then, you

have to run thicker oil. Unless oil can re-

side in the valleys, it sits on the cylinder

wall and must be thick not to be torn

off by the rings. We think valleys need

to be in the mid to high 30 microinches

(0.000030"/0.00076 mm) to really seal

a race engine strongly, and deeper in

the mid to high 40s [microinches] for a

more conventional engine.

“For some blocks using today’s

steel rings, we hone for peaks of 12–15

microinches (0.000012–15"/0.00030–

0.00038 mm) or smoother. When we

turn the short block over manually

with a wrench, the rings will knock the

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Shop Solutions

40 ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com | June 2014

A Chevrolet performance small block is being honed at

Dart Machinery in the new SV-20 flexible honing system

from Sunnen.

See us at Booth #W-1452

peaks down to 5 [microinches] or less before we ever start the

engine, but the valleys remain. We may not always take the

peaks off during honing. If you ball-hone or sandpaper, think-

ing you’ll accomplish this, you’ll simply reduce valley depth

and the engine won’t run as good. In our experience, if you go

smoother on honing peaks and valleys, the finish won’t last as

long. Starting with a rougher finish, the block is going to wear

in and be sealed up so tight it will surprise you,” Maskin said.

The SV-20 honing system gives Dart the flexibility to

efficiently process any engine block in any material and hard-

ness. “There is no typical production run for us,” said Maskin.

“We can put a new block on the SV-20, once the program

is written, and no machine can make a cylinder rounder or

straighter. The finish is all based on programming. If you know

where you want to go, you can get there,” Maskin said.

“Computer control has taken much of the black art out of

honing. Machines like the SV-20 produce a finish and size

that previously required a very talented machinist. If you have

to hone different blocks with different material content, like we

do, the newer equipment is significantly better,” Maskin said.

The Sunnen SV-20 honing system uses programmable control

to replicate “best” engine parameters and produce expert

results with minimal operator expertise. ME

For more information from Sunnen Products Co., go to

www.sunnen.com, or phone 800-325-3670

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Shop Solutions


Sunnen’s two-stage diamond abrasive honing tool does

roughing and finishing with 220- and 500-grit abrasives

without pause for stone change, making a wide range

of finishing options available to Dart Machinery.

Grinding Optics On CNC Machining Centers

During the past decade, Optimax (Ontario, NY) has expe-

rienced exceptional growth due to

the tremendous demand for specialized

optics and lenses that it manufactures for

a wide range of applications including:

aerospace, defense and medical devices,

lithography, and biomedical. As a result,

the company’s staff has expanded from

approximately 100 to 200 people, shifts

have risen from two to three (five days

a week), and manufacturing technology

equipment has grown from ten to approx-

imately fifty pieces of CNC machinery.

Three, four, and five-axis machining

centers are used for grinding, polishing

and shaping the lenses with diamond

tooling. Even though there is five times

more equipment operating over three

shifts (a nearly 10x increase in spindle

hours), the manpower required to write

programs for and operate this advanced

CNC equipment has barely doubled. Be-

ing able to output ten times the work with

only double the manpower translates into

roughly a five-fold increase in manufac-

turing productivity. Of course, the actual

productivity increase is significantly

greater than that because four- and five-

axis equipment allows many of the more

complex operations to be performed at

high speeds with a single setup.

Al Gould, mechanical engineer for

Optimax, said his company’s ever-

improving manufacturing agility and

productivity has occurred in tandem

with the rapidly expanding feature set

of its chosen CAM software, Mastercam

from CNC Software (Tolland, CT). The

company has three seats of Master-

cam with a maintenance license that

entitles it to free annual upgrades.

Working closely with its reseller, Optipro

Systems, the company routinely implements new toolpaths

and features that will enhance programming productivity

and reduce machine cycles. Eight staff members at Opti-

max use Mastercam day in and day out. Another eight are

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gaining proficiency and can step in as needed to support the

primary programmers.

Many of the R&D initiatives that have taken place at Opti-

max play a pivotal role in the direction and magnitude of the

company’s growth. “R&D activities at Optimax are primarily

SBIR projects funded by the Navy, Air Force, and NASA. All

of these agencies have a need for optics that can’t be made

currently. So we submit proposals to develop a process for

making these unusual optics,” said Gould. “The other job we

have in R&D is to take what we learned in those projects and

apply it to what we do on the shop floor. We try to take things

that are related to our work here at Optimax—whether it

involves extremely hard materials or extremely difficult geom-

etries—and apply it to our own manufacturing. Things that we

are doing now in the SBIR projects that are pie-in-the-sky, we

will be making commercially in five years.”

Recent R&D programs have focused on asymmetric lenses,

which are even more geometrically complex optics. These

completely free form optics are in development for both com-

mercial and defense applications. Asymmetric lenses can be

used as windows that correct distortions present in other optical

devices that are focused through them. The shape of an asym-

metric lens for a particular application is defined by a unique

equation that is translated into a Mastercam program governing

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Shop Solutions


Optimax uses Mastercam CAM software to program

machining centers to grind sophisticated custom lenses

using diamond-cutting tools.

See us at Booth #E-5616

the precise grinding of the shape into a glass substrate using a

five-axis machining center.

A goal of recent asymmetric lens projects has been to meet

form tolerances of approximately one micron over an area

of approximately 250 mm2. Manufacturing them involves a

meticulous process that begins by fine grinding lenses on the

machining center. Intense polishing then imparts additional

dimensional properties and surface finish. After measuring

the lens, a final polishing step corrects

any deviation from spec found during

measurement. Gould explained that there

is no room for error in this process, since

a blank of the material that you can hold

in the palms of two hands can cost up to

$5000. Even more disconcerting, it may

be the only one in existence and it could

take up to six months to “grow” another

one in a vacuum chamber.

When Optimax completes an R&D

project it generally delivers a part along

with documentation of a complete

manufacturing process using its existing

manufacturing and metrology equipment.

R&D projects are completely integrated

with all of the other manufacturing work

that is taking place at Optimax. Fast turn-

arounds of R&D projects is a function of

on-going general improvements in the

company’s manufacturing capabilities.

Gould said that Mastercam has pro-

vided a number of advancements that

have significantly improved the through-

put of both its conventional and R&D

optics manufacturing. For example,

integration with solid models is easily

accomplished. Some projects come in

as marked up drawings via PDF. Most

typical geometries for objects can be

defined with four terms: thickness,

diameter, and radius. “We just drop

them into Mastercam and away we go,”

Gould said.

Machine configurations for all of

CNC equipment, regardless of type, are

available from within the Mastercam

programming environment. So there

are times where operations for milling,

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“Creating a program to make a new lens is really quick.

You pick the machine, you pick the toolpath, and you set a

few parameters using menus. The longest part is waiting for

the CAM program to generate the toolpath, if there’s a lot of

complex geometry or for it to generate

the posts. One of the nice features of

Mastercam is that it is multi-threaded,

so while those things are going on in

the background, you can be working on

another part,” said Gould.

Toolpath selection is critical in using

diamond tools to grind super precise

shapes that require minimal polish-

ing. One of the most frequently used is

Mastercam’s multi-axis Flowline toolpath

for both roughing and finishing. This

selection keeps the tool always moving

in the same direction, which is critical

to creating precise surfaces. Using this

toolpath, it may take 4 to 16 hours to

grind a precision lens. While this seems a

long time, this process actually eliminates

many more hours that would be required

for subsequent polishing. These preci-

sion machining capabilities have reduced

polishing requirements by about 50%.

Programmers continually use

Mastercam’s Backplot and Simulation

modes to assure that toolpaths have no interferences and that

material removal is correct. This prevents damage to expen-

sive materials that may be irreplaceable.

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Continued on page 88

Optipro lenses are inspected after

polishing. Mastercam advanced

high precision toolpaths have

helped reduce subsequent polishing

requirements by about 50%.

The five-axis machine is one of the most heavily scheduled

pieces of equipment in the building because of it exceptional

productivity. Optimax also has another CNC machining center

that was designed especially for 3+2 machining. Multiple 3D

machining operations for 3+2 machining can be programmed

rapidly by quickly selecting tool orientations using Master-

cam’s WCS (Work Coordinate System).

Optimax is eager for its CAM partner to pursue lines of

development that are particularly advantageous for manu-

facturing lenses on standard production equipment. Gould

is impressed by how closely Mastercam listens to requests

for additional functionality. There have been a number of

times when he and others at the company have met with

reseller Optipro Systems to review desired features impact-

ing optical manufacturing precision and productivity. In

time, unique features much like those described appear

in subsequent versions of the software. While Optimax is

developing advanced optics that will be mainstream in five

years, Mastercam is at work developing CAM software tools

that will allow them to be manufactured more efficiently. ME

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Continued from page 47

Aspheric optics have one or more surfaces that have a

non-linear radius of curvature, but they have at least one

axis along which they are symmetrical. One aspheric

lens can take the place of three lenses in conventional

applications in aerospace, defense, medical devices,

lithography, and biomedical industries.

For more information from Mastercam/CNC Software Inc.,

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Team Effort Automates High Tech Job Shop

Investing in factory automation for the first time is a big deci-

sion for many CNC machine shops. For Loveridge Machine

(Salt Lake City, UT), owner Dennis Loveridge thoroughly

researched his options before making a decision for his high

tech job shop. Loveridge clearly defined what the company

wanted to achieve in automating a key work cell, shared this

information with six different machine tool suppliers, and

carefully evaluated the results with son and general manager

David Loveridge and his staff. In the end, Loveridge Machine

chose to work with Okuma distributor Hartwig Inc. (St. Louis).

According to Hartwig sales engineer Scott Clinger, “This

was truly a team effort that included Okuma, Gosiger Auto-

mation, Renishaw Inc. and Caron Engineering—all working

closely with Loveridge Machine to create the most effective

automated solution. The result is a system that the customer

tells us reduces their labor costs for these parts by 50%”

Loveridge Machine has been a successful, family-owned

high-tech CNC machine shop since 1975, making complex

prototypes and medium size production runs for such diverse

industries as aerospace, automotive, defense, oil fields, and

roller coasters. The company even had a role in the Hubble

telescope and the space shuttles.

Since 2000, the company has produced 30,000 parts per

year for an illumination flare used by the US military. Dave

Loveridge said: “Each year, the tolerances, cost and delivery re-

quirements for these parts become more challenging, especially

because machining these items is very labor intensive. Each part

has a short cycle time so the machine operators aren’t able to

do other work in between cycles. This adds up to a lot of wasted

time. We decided we needed to look into automating this process

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so we could reduce labor costs for each part, and free our people

to work on other tasks. We chose Hartwig because their proposal

satisfied all of our demands and they convinced us that the

Okuma CNC lathe was the best solution for our application.”

Hartwig’s Scott Clinger recommended the Okuma LB-

3000EX-MYW CNC machine tool as the best choice for per-

forming the various machining operations necessary to meet

Loveridge’s accuracy and part volume requirements. “How-

ever, this situation demanded a lot more

than a great machine tool, so I con-

tacted our factory automation partner,

Gosiger Automation in Dayton, Ohio.

After I explained the customer’s require-

ments to Mark Eddy and his team, they

designed a comprehensive solution that

incorporated robotics, inspection and

material handling.”

“One of the critical issues with this

application is that the part starts as an

aluminum impact forging and the OD to

ID is not perfectly concentric. This made

automating loading and unloading of

parts more difficult. Another factor we

wanted to address is how to automate

part inspection and any necessary tool

offsets,” said Loveridge.

Meeting these demands required

Gosiger Automation to integrate a num-

ber of components with the Okuma lathe.

The first challenge, according to Mark

Eddy, was enabling the Fanuc M-10iA/10

six-axis industrial robot to properly locate

and grip the forgings despite the lack

of OD/ID concentricity. “The aluminum

impact forgings are manually loaded

onto a powered conveyor queue standing

on end, hollow end up. The conveyor

has fixed side rails to maintain the part

positioning. At the robot end of the con-

veyor, a nest captures the leading part in

a nesting position for robotic handling.

Each of the continuous belt conveyors

has a capacity of 30 parts,” said Eddy.

“After pick up, the forging is evaluated

using Fanuc iR-Vision to determine the

offset of the part bore from the robot-

gripped O.D. This eliminates the effects

of I.D. to O.D. part run out when loading

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Shop Solutions


vision feedback, then offsets the part for loading either the main or sub-spindle of the

machine tool. O.D. to I.D. run out of the aluminum impacts is a maximum of 0.085" [2

mm] and mandrel load clearance is 0.030" [0.76 mm] at maximum material condition.

“The robot is equipped with a single, pneumatic two-jaw gripper with inter-

changeable chuck jaws specifically designed for these parts. The parts are gripped

by their outside diameters for loading onto the sub-spindle OP10 arbor and for

removal from the machine tool’s main spindle chuck. The robot system interfaces

with the Okuma lathe using Ethernet I/P,” said Eddy.

To meet Loveridge’s part inspection requirements, Hartwig and Gosiger Automa-

tion chose the Renishaw Equator for its versatility, precision and reliability. The gage

uses an SP25 scanning probe to take thousands of data points, much like a coor-

dinate measuring machine (CMM). However, while most CMMs are designed for

off-floor operation, the Equator was built for use in the manufacturing environment.

However, Loveridge was looking for more than part inspection, they also wanted

to use this data for statistical process control (SPC). The answer was to take the

data from the Renishaw Equator and process it through Caron Engineering’s

AutoComp software. Ryan Hegman, national sales manager for Caron Engineering

said: “After every fourth

part is machined, the

Fanuc robot places the

part into the Renishaw

Equator for scanning.

The data are then

sent to the AutoComp

software, which pro-

cesses the information

and compares it to the

master. If the software

determines that an

offset (in 10 thousandths of an inch increments) is necessary to maintain accurate

machining, it works through the Okuma OSP control to make the correction. All of

this happens automatically, with no operator intervention necessary.”

Automating a manufacturing process to meet specific customer wishes means

pulling together a variety of resources and integrating them as seamlessly as pos-

sible. “Gosiger Automation, Renishaw and Caron all worked with us to meet the cus-

tomer’s expectations. In addition, the people of Loveridge Machine were supportive

and cooperative every step of the way, which is critical to this kind of installation. We

all worked together to give them the results they were looking for: reduced cost-per-

part, better use of their manpower and a system that keeps pumping out quality

parts,” said Hartwig’s Scott Clinger. ME

For more information from Gosiger Automation, go to www.gosiger.com, or

phone 877-288-1538; from Hartwig Inc. go to www.hartwiginc.com or phone 314-

426-5300; from Okuma America Corp., go to www.okuma.com, or phone 704-588-

7000; from Renishaw Inc., go to www.renishaw.com, or phone 847-286-9953; from

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Ideal choice for Job Shops or OEM manufacturers whose customers need quick delivery of high quality � nished components at low cost.

Comprehensive Factory training and on going tech support to keep you � nishing in the black. Call us today: 952-937-7931.

TRU TEMP® 30 minute process.

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Okuma’s LB-3000EX-MYW CNC lathe is at the heart of

Loveridge Machine's workcell.

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