As a leading manufacturer and supplier of mould types and tools for the production of bottles for the food and beverage, healthcare and personal care sectors, R&D/Leverage located near Mansfield has recently added WorkNC from Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence (HMI) to its existing Edgecam system. MTDCNC visited to find out more.
MTD spoke with Andy Phillips who heads the manufacturing division of the company that he has been with for 25 years. Giving MTD some company background, Andy says: “We are an American owned company that was bought out nearly 30 years ago. We make the injection stretch blow moulds for the high-end plastic industry and we export all over the world.”
When asked why the company has invested so heavily in the very latest machine tools, Andy continues: “We have to invest in the very latest technology to stay ahead of our competitors. We are the best at what we do, but there is always competition coming up behind us. So, we have to invest in the very best machines and software. We couldn’t subcontract our work to anybody else because the whole product solution would be too much for anyone else to do. We are a total product solution provider and we work from the concept of the bottle right up to the servicing of the machines that the customers are using all over the world to produce bottles.”
The company has been employing Edgecam from Hexagon for more than eight years and more recently, it has adopted WorkNC. Discussing the journey with Hexagon, Andy recalls: “It all started when we had various companies come in and demonstrate their products to us. Edgecam came out on top with what it would give us as far as us being able to integrate within Creo. It would allow us to use our Creo templates through Edgecam, so that we could then throw strategies over the templates. It effectively became a case of pushing one button, as it does the tooling itself.”
“More recently, Matt from Hexagon came to me regarding WorkNC. Before adopting WorkNC, we were using software called Prospect, but this requires a lot of work and skill. This is why we looked at WorkNC and we immediately thought that it was the software for us.”
“The Prospect system only had certain file types whereas WorkNC enables us to use solid models, it works out angles and it does literally everything for you rather than having to do it within the software. We have a lot of intricate bottle shapes that require twists on our 5-axis machine, this software has given us the ability to do that all within the software.”
Referring to how the Sutton-in-Ashfield company has benefitted from bolting WorkNC onto its existing Edgecam package, Andy concludes: “It has been a huge benefit to us. We have been using WorkNC for nearly a year and it is certainly seamless. We go straight from the Creo software into the WorkNC and we have had fantastic support and help with guidance all along the way – and it has worked out a treat. The system has brought us a long way from where we were with our old software. There is no way we could be where we are today without using that software.”
