Century Tool and Tebis combine for weight and speed

Century Tool & Gage (Fenton, MI) knows big workpieces. The company, which has made a name for itself building compression molds and secondary tooling for the automotive, heavy truck, aerospace and personal watercraft industries, includes tooling for large exterior body panels like roofs, hoods and deck lids among its portfolio of products. “We have the ability to handle blocks of up to 60 tons and machine block sizes up to 100-in. wide by 300-in. long,” notes Mickey Guckian, CAD/CAM manager at Century.

Early on, Century realized that success in its chosen field demanded first-rate technology, like Jobs high speed five-axis machining centers with bed sizes ranging from 80 x 200-in. to 140 x 220-in., Jo'Mach vertical mills with five-axis heads for both roughing and high speed finishing, and Heyligenstaedt vertical mills capable of handling up to 20 tons of weight on the bed plate, among other top performers. They used the same philosophy when picking a CAM system, and chose Tebis.

“Tebis is considered to be the industry's best software for 5-axis machining,” says Kevin Cummings, engineering manager at Century. “It combines quality and flexibility, and gives our customers the highest degree of accuracy and speed.”

“Specifically, we do a lot of large components such as truck molds, etc.,” reiterates Mickey Guckian, CAD/CAM manager for Century, “and one of the things that Tebis does really well is larger jobs.”

These tools are particularly useful when Century employs full 5-axis simultaneous milling. Before they calculate an NC program they can perform a detailed analysis of the tilt directions for the tool, also taking head geometry and machine kinematics into account. Collision avoidance calculations include the holder components defined in the Tebis tool library, and the Tebis simulator checks all machine components and limit switches.

Guckian adds that Tebis permits simple and intuitive operation, even during 5-axis simultaneous machining, thanks to its standard onboard operating strategies. In addition, this facilitates the machining of complex geometries without multiple setups.

“Automotive is our largest niche but we do take on aerospace fuselage parts which require full five-axis machining,” says Guckian. He states flatly that “We would never have been able to do these parts if not for the capabilities of Tebis.”

John Kowalczyk of Tebis notes another aspect of his company’s 5-axis simultaneous machining capability. “With many other 5-axis CAM solutions the machine’s movement can be choppy. With Tebis these movements can be done very smoothly, leading to good surface finishes, a vital consideration in aerospace.”

And the speed improvements have not all been limited to large workpieces. “The Tebis 2.5D Drilling and Milling module has been particularly helpful with our smaller workpieces,” notes Mickey Guckian. This module allows users to edit holes, pockets, planar surfaces and ruled geometries, despite their differences. Users can call up and manage relevant tools in the Tebis library and individually assign them to different machining operations and machines. They can create templates embodying best practices and optimal machining parameters, thus speeding future work as well as the job at hand.

Guckian reports that this module has allowed them to get small mold details finished 75 percent faster than before. Programming, too, is a fraction of what it used to be.