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PITCO Products was founded in 1958 to serve the aerospace industry. They still focus on making the best spinners in the industry. A spinner is the “nose cone” in front of a propeller on prop aircraft.
The process for making spinners has been largely manual from the beginning. A blank piece of aluminum (usually) is put on a spinning machine and an operator uses an axe handle to push the blank over a form. The part is heat treated. Once treated, the part is hand polished to a mirror-like finish. A protective coat is put on the part. Holes are then drilled for mounting and cutouts for propellers are milled.
PITCO began exploring ways to automate portions of the process to improve repeatability and consistency, thus reducing expensive rework and scrap. Over the past several years, they have added their own heat treat oven and become NadCap accredited. PITCO added an NC controlled waterjet for cutting blanks and other smaller parts.
PITCO has had a Milltronics 3-axis mill for many years and decided to add a 4th and 5th-axis capability to better automate the drilling and milling on the spinner shells and bulkheads. A Trokye trunion/table was added to provide 5-axis capabilities.
The final piece of the automation puzzle was
a CAM application to program the newly enhanced Milltronics mill. |
use became critical. Local customer support was also key. After evaluating a number of CAM offerings, PITCO selected TopSolid as the last piece of the puzzle.
Ross Freimuth, Application Engineer for reThink Engineering, developed an accurate model of both the machine and the Troyke table. He then developed the post processor, taking a standard 3-axis Milltronics post and adding the 5-axis rotations and processes.
Tom Heyne is the PITCO project leader and lead programmer. He has learned both the CAD and the CAM side of TopSolid to handle the programming. Most of PITCO’s customers are from the aerospace industry, so Tom has the unenviable task of dealing with CATIA files on a regular basis.
This project has paid off for PITCO as they project a 300% growth rate for 2008. This is leading Geoff Hoefflin, PITCO GM, to purchase a new, bigger building.
reThink Engineering, Inc. Newsletter. ____Vol. 2. Issue 2. Cincinnati: 2008.
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5 Axis Simultaneous CNC Machining