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CWF Hamilton & Co. in Christchurch, New Zealand, manufactures HamiltonJet waterjet propulsion systems, which give a boat tremendous maneuvering capabilities while allowing it to travel in shallow water areas. These drives are also extremely important for military applications, allowing troops to be offloaded within feet of a shoreline.
Since 1954, HamiltonJet has been working with vessel designers and builders to create waterjet propulsion systems that deliver high performance and efficiency. The company pioneered the development of the modern waterjet over 50 years ago, and they continue with unique innovations today.
Building these complex waterjets isn’t easy. Many of the parts start out as castings and have to be either turned or milled. Often shaft work requires the use of a five-axis turning center to productively produce the many machined features.
Machining these various complex features presents challenges, for example, the complex toolpaths that a five-axis machine tool must follow. Mike Neville, senior programmer with the company, notes that the company has turned to Mastercam Mill Level 3, Lathe, Multiaxis, and Solids software to help meet these challenges. With robust business growth resulting from successful products, the company now has over 300 employees in a 10,000 square meter factory, and has gone from having one Mastercam programmer to five full-time machine tool programmers.
HamiltonJet has a range of 15 waterjet units. Neville says, “We have castings of the primary outer parts of the unit along with main shafts, couplings, and other internal components. These components all require machining processes.
When Neville first started with the company, they were doing their toolpath programming right at the machine, using paper tape, pen, and paper. He says, “It was going back to the dark ages. Mastercam version 4.11 was supplied to us when we bought our first horizontal CNC machining center in 1990. As the company grew, we started to use the software a lot more. We used different post processors to modify Mastercam for different machine tools from multitasking machines to a multiaxis lathe and two-axis lathes. Mastercam handles everything that we throw at it. It allows us to get programmers who are using it trained and programming relatively quickly.”
Neville adds, “We looked at other toolpath software through the years, but we never went much further than testing it, because Mastercam works so well and we’ve grown with it. And we’ve developed some specific post processors for our lathe software that work extremely well for our applications.”
Today, the company uses four five-axis lathes. Neville adds, “To program a five-axis lathe would just about be impossible to keep all the cutting areas under control without Mastercam.”
Castings that house the internal waterjet drive parts aren’t that difficult to machine, noted Neville. The trickiest parts are the main shafts for jet drives. They require a lot of different operations for their various features, such as different diameters on the main shaft, threads, splines, and tapered keyways. For machining them, the company uses five-axis mill/turn lathes, allowing all the operations to be completed on the one machine.
“Mastercam really shines for this type of machining,” says Neville. “It used to take up to 45 minutes to machine a keyway on the shaft. By using Mastercam and streamlining the toolpath, I was able to get the machining down to 11 minutes. These machines are also time critical. We don’t have much time to spare on them, so by reducing machining times, it helps us put through more product. Mastercam’s Verify feature has also helped us to make sure the new toolpath would do what we wanted it to do and to speed production up. Mastercam saves a lot of time on our machine tools because of its capabilities.”
HamiltonJet also designs and manufactures hydraulic and electronic control components for all its waterjet models. Its electronic control systems can integrate with a range of other vessel systems, such as engine and gearbox controls, autopilot, voyage data recorders, and dynamic positioning systems to provide complete vessel maneuvering control. |