Vertical integration reduces cycle times

With 40 years of experience in the aerospace industry, 650 employees, and five manufacturing sites spread across North America, Noranco Inc. ranks as a major supplier for such well-known customers as Bombardier, Bell Helicopter, and Lockheed Martin. The core competence of the company lies in the manufacture of highly complex structural parts, landing gear components, and engine casings for aircraft and helicopters. Its service spectrum ranges from development to machining to final quality control. Noranco meets the high demands placed on production with innovative CNC technology from DMG MORI, as its recent purchase of a DMC 160 U duoBLOCK shows.

Quality is of overriding importance in all industries, especially in those where human safety is a key factor. In the aerospace industry, if worse comes to worst, minor faults in material or workmanship can have devastating consequences. It is critical that manufacturers and suppliers meet and exceed all quality requirements despite growing demands. As a leading supplier of structural parts and landing gear components, Noranco is committed to exactly this high standard of quality.

“Not only do we fulfill the specifications of our customers, we actually exceed their expectations by continuously improving our level of quality,” says Nick Ciccone, vice president, Noranco.

As a one-stop supplier, Noranco places great importance on a high degree of vertical integration to ensure that all process steps from development through to quality are firmly under control.

“We ourselves can, for the most part, control the processes and traceability of all products and do not have to rely on other service providers in this respect,” Ciccone says. “Our ability to produce as efficiently as possible is the key to our future.”
 

Equipped for demanding applications

In the case of Noranco, part of controlling processes means continuously modernizing its CNC equipment, because more than 50% of its operations involve metal removal. And the challenges in this area are huge.

“The metal removal rates involved in the manufacture of our products are enormous, and we process a lot of demanding materials such as titanium and Inconel,” Ciccone explains.

It is not simply a question of buying a machining center; the company needs a customized manufacturing solution. That’s why the company turned to DMG MORI. Noranco has already integrated many high-performance and successful machining solutions into its production that it developed in cooperation with the machine tool manufacturer.

The DMC 160 U DuoBLOCK machines, among other things, make the aforementioned landing gear components from highly sophisticated Ti 10-2-3 alloys. The parts were formerly produced in a complicated and relatively unstable process, so Ciccone’s goal was quite clear.

“We wanted to achieve a production system with reliable processes and shorter cycle times,” he says. “That is why we did not skimp on the equipment.”

DMG MORI’s Aerospace Excellence Center of Deckel Maho Pfronten solved these performance requirements with state-of-the-art machine tool technology by equipping a DMC 160 U DuoBLOCK with a heavy machining package including a powerful gear spindle – with a rating of 8,000rpm and a torque of 1,100Nm – and additional connectable hydraulic damping pads on the linear axes. The solution also includes a high-pressure cooling system and a robust B-axis for high-precision 5-axis machining. Noranco now achieves very high metal removal rates with tool life of 120 minutes for rough machining. Deckel Maho has achieved the original goal of reducing cycle times as Ciccone notes that runtime has been substantially reduced.

Deckel Maho Pfronten offered the DMC 160 U duoBLOCK as a turnkey project, and Ciccone is more than satisfied with the performance of the machine tool manufacturer: “The engineers developed the entire technology and milling strategy, selected the appropriate tools, and developed the innovative equipment concept.”

The entire process was run-off onsite at Noranco by DMG MORI application technicians, and one highlight that Ciccone greatly appreciates is the specially developed clamping device.

“Positioning tolerance of the bearing seats is 0.025mm with a distance of 960mm,” he says.

Solutions such as the innovative clamping device or the custom-developed milling strategies indicate the high level of competence required on both sides of such a turnkey project.

“Clamping a workpiece in such a way that machining quality remains consistently high is imperative, in particular where 5-axis chip removal is concerned. The tool paths also have a great impact on the degree to which a component is stressed,” Ciccone says.

He regards 5-axis simultaneous machining as one of the key trends in aerospace technology.

“Not only does this make machining more efficient; the low number of clamping operations also boosts machining quality,” Ciccone says.

He sees other developments in aerospace technology in the increased planning of processes with the aid of intelligent software solutions, the development of new manufacturing technologies aimed specifically at the machining of light-weight components, and the growing automation of processes. Noranco has already implemented the latter with the pallet changer of the DMC 160 U duoBLOCK.

“The pallet changer provides us with a high level of flexibility in the production of single parts, because we can set up parallel to production time,” the Ciccone adds.
 

Success with the right partner

The DMU 160 U duoBLOCK and the previously installed models from DMG MORI have won over both Ciccone and the operators where day-to-day handling of the machines is concerned. From an economic point of view, Ciccone stresses the benefit of the price/performance ratio of the machines. From a technological point of view, the balanced ratio of torque to speed of the spindles is a point worth stressing: “A fact that not only makes the machines well suited for the high-precision and fast machining of aluminium and steel, but thanks to the high torque, also ideal for the heavy machining of titanium and Inconel.”

“We have certainly learned a lot here and will in the future be able to build upon this experience in order to continue installing the best possible manufacturing solutions,” Ciccone concludes.

DMG MORI
www.dmgmori.com

Noranco Inc.
www.noranco.com