The Sperry Gyroscope Company was founded in 1910 by Elmer A. Sperry, a noted engineer and inventor, who patented the first ballistic marine gyrocompass in 1911. During World War I, Sperry continued in the development of new-generation gyrocompass products, and also pioneered the development of gyro-fire control and autopilot systems.
Following the war, Sperry Marine continued to solidify its position as the leading supplier of marine gyrocompasses and took the lead in developing integrated bridge systems for the commercial marine and naval markets. During the 1990s, Sperry Marine introduced the first ring-laser gyro system for the U.S. Navy and rapidly became the world leader in this technology.
In their Charlottesville, VA facility, Sperry Marine produces systems for the Navy, commercial, and large pleasure ships. Some of these products include autopilot and steering systems, fish trackers, communication systems, gyrocompasses, radar, ship defense systems, and voyage-tracking devices. To make sure these products are able to be produced and get to market on time, Sperry Marine uses Mastercam Mill, Lathe and Solids CAD/CAM software (CNC Software, Inc., Tolland, CT).
Jeff Rasnake, manufacturing engineer, remarked, “We are using Mastercam to design our workholding fixtures and program the information into our CNC machine tools. We have nine CNC machines encompassing both VMCs and HMCs, and we have our post processors modified to suit each machine. These are three-axis machines, but some use a 4th rotary axis. Mastercam really helps us to take advantage of the rotary-axis capability. To program all these axes movements without Mastercam would be difficult to impossible.”
“Seventy-five percent of our parts are two dimensional, but we do get into 3D modeling and also surfacing using ball mills for some of our products. We aren’t necessarily programming to the solid models, but we are bringing in models from our engineering and design group. Surfacing is used to blend certain parts’ surfaces and Mastercam is great to create my contours using ball-end mills.”
Rasnake said that they do high-quality parts in low-production lots. A long run for them is 100 parts where an average one is only ten. Most of these navigation system products are large and complex.
“Mastercam is user friendly,” added Rasnake. “For 20 years I was a machinist. When I transferred to a manufacturing engineer desk job, I found that this program was easy to use, and I could get up and running without a lot of computer training. It’s great for someone who has common machining abilities. It’s very intuitive. It is so easy to use, especially when you compare it to the programs that the machine tool uses for programming.”
Rasnake also uses Mastercam to verify and back plot parts to make sure there are no programming mistakes before the component gets to the machine for cutting. “It also lets me know what my cutter moves are, so I won’t have any crashes on the machine.”
“We do get into parts that would be difficult or almost impossible to program on the machine that Mastercam easily does for us,” he remarked. “This is especially true when it comes to 3D parts. Another thing I use Mastercam for is to create geometry for a drawing. A drawing will give you enough information to make the part, but some of the machinists using manual machine tools will come to me and I’ll create geometry for them. I’ll give them the end points for radii and layout points for them to work to and to inspect their parts from. I’ll also create geometry for the inspector to see arcs and start/end points.”
“I use it for a lot more than just programming too,” notes Rasnake. “I also use it to design my workholding fixtures. I design the part and then draw the fixture in relation to the part to make sure my locating pins line up properly. It’s handy to create fixtures that can be machined also. I’ll use the geometry created for the fixture to program the machine to cut it. I’m using the same geometry and the same file to create a program for the fixture, and for the part. Later if they change the part, Mastercam is very easy for me to go in and make edits and not have to reprogram from scratch. I can use the old geometry to my advantage for changes. It’s just great software all the way around. I would recommend it to anyone. In my opinion for CAM, I would say Mastercam is the top software package.”
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