【正文】 of deploying multiaxis machines center on improved productivity, higher machining accuracy, reduced inprocess inventory, and improved operator and machine usage.In aerospace, it39。s primarily to eliminate the need for form cutters, because there are very few, if any, parts in aircraft structures that have straight lines on them, notes Randy Von Moll, technical product manager for the HyperMach line of fiveaxis machining centers from Cincinnati Lamb (Hebron, KY). Everything has contour to it, and typically it39。s a pound contour because of the shapes of aerodynamic structures. Airplanes, especially modern fighters and bombers, are getting stealthier. That means they have more contour, more curvature than ever before, and they must be machined on fiveaxis equipment.Standardized tooling saves money and lead time for manufacturers, he adds. If you can stock multiple tools on your shelves, just standard solid carbide end mills versus having special tools ground with different angles on them to produce the contours, it reduces cost and leadtime.With Cincinnati Lamb39。s HyperMach profiler, aerospace users can machine large aircraft parts. Fiveaxis configurations vary widely depending on the application, but in aerospace machining, both rotary axes are on the spindle, notes Von Moll, as in Cincinnati39。s HyperMach, a 7039。 (21m) long highspeed fiveaxis linear motor profiler recently demonstrated cutting at 4000 ipm (102 m/min). In Cincinnati39。s demo for its aerospace customers, aluminum parts were milled from solid billet stock with spindle speeds to 18,000 rpm while exceeding 130 hp (97 kW) and 450 (7374 cm3/min) metal removal rate. The system will be used this summer by aerospace supplier Brek Manufacturing Co. (Gardena, CA) to machine large structural sections of Boeing39。s (Seattle) C17 Globemaster transport plane.Typically on a large aerospace machine, both rotary axes are on the spindle, Von Moll says. In our case, the fifth axis is applied as a tilting spindle, to give you full fiveaxis contouring capability. Other people do a rotary tilting table and put both the rotary motions under the part. Our design has the tilting spindle.With larger structural parts for aerospace, gantrytype machining systems like the HyperMach also are needed to handle the sheer size of airframe ponents. The parts are typically getting larger, not smaller, notes Von Moll, because the trend is toward monolithic structures. You used to have multiple sheetmetal ponents that were manufactured and then fastened together mechanically, which demanded a lot of additional assembly tooling and assembly labor.Programming plexity, aside from high cost, has posed the biggest barriers to widespread adoption of fiveaxis machinery. Fiveaxis machines continue to get faster and more accurate, so it39。s a technology that39。s emerging, Brett Hopkins, senior application engineer, machining centers, at Makino (Mason, OH). It has its applications, but it is certainly not a mature, fully functional technology yet. CAM systems are still very weak. The learning curve for a CAD/CAM operator to bee very good with fiveaxis is a challenge for shops.Since Makino focuses on highcost, highprecision fiveaxis applications, the pany39。s offerings for die/mold haven39。t been widely received by the industry based on cost, Hopkins says. Among the European builders, there39。s a huge push in the fiveaxis machining centers for die/mold, and they39。re doing a fairly good job of marketing that philosophy. There are benefits to the fiveaxis approach, in terms of being able to hit multiple sides of the parts and being able to shorten your tool length on side walls.There are some significant limitations to full five axis right now, he adds. Very few CAM systems can give you good data for full fiveaxis machining. They are almost all capable of giving you good data for 3+2axis machining. PowerMILL by Delcam for the machining center area is probably second to none, and then Unigraphics and Open Mind are the other leaders.For die/mold, anytime that we can machine in a 3+2 manner, you39。ve got significant benefit to the accuracy and surface finish of your part, says Hopkins. Full five axis is something to be done when other options are not allowed based on the geometryyou39。ve got to do that in full five axis. And the only industry where we39。ve seen that happen at the moment is in the aerospace industry, like with blisk work, which is a bination of blade and disk. Die/mold can take advantage of threeaxis or 3+2.Competing with Asia and Eastern Europe has led European manufacturers to embrace fiveaxis technology. CAM software and the sheer cost of fiveaxis machine tools are now less of an issue than in recent years, notes Mark Forth, PowerMILL product manager for Delcam plc (Birmingham, UK). The key is that it needs to be easy to use and it absolutely has to do the job, Forth says.In Europe, manufacturers readily accepted fiveaxis machining as a way to help pete with lowercost labor centers in Asia and also in Eastern Europe. Forth notes that Delcam39。s research showed that more than 50% of Delcam39。s European customers went into fiveaxis machining in 2003, while in North America fiveaxis accounted for about 20% of its sales.Because labor39。s so cheap in other markets, panies that want to remain petitive have to start machining smarter, Forth notes, which doesn39。t mean just machining faster or working longer hours. It means looking really closely at your current processes, focusing on your application, and investing in new technology, training, correct tooling, and a host of other factors to cut down lead times, so we can remain petitive.It39。s a really plex issue, and there are many different reasons why adoption of the technology has been slow, he adds. First, these machines aren39。t cheap. It39。s all right if you39。re a Boeing or another large manufacturer, but for the tooling guys that are thinking of investing in this technology, it39。s a big chunk o