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1 October 2006

CAM system in use at Bombardier in Montreal, Canada, pays for itself in 2 months in material savings alone.

Bombardier Aerospace, based in Montreal, Canada is a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative aviation products and services for the regional, business and amphibious aircraft markets. In 2004 it began a project to replace its existing Unix-based CAM/nesting system, which had not improved in nesting efficiency for some time. They chose JETCAM.

JETCAM Expert was installed on a Citrix server platform to allow users to run on client systems throughout the organisation worldwide. JETCAM Orders Controller (JOC) was also installed on the server being accessed by method engineers (programmers), logistics staff and production staff. Further licenses were added in 2006 to drive the Multicam router, with licenses for the Shoda being installed at the end of 2006.

The initial benchmarks gave Bombardier an indication of the material savings they could expect and in practice this alone quickly paid for the project. On average an approximate 15-20% saving was made which meant that the software paid for itself in around two months due to composite material savings alone.

Further savings were noted on the shop floor, with machine cycle time seeing a 5% improvement (saving around 120 hours on the machine per year) as the software did not force the cutter head to keep rising after each cut, which the previous system did.

Programming time was drastically reduced due to the fact that component Œtooling‚ is now virtually instantaneous. Previously, if an error were noticed on a component, it would have to be repaired in the CAD system and go back through the CAM process again. Now operators can perform modifications within JETCAM.

Bombardier is already on its third installation of JETCAM Expert in its Saint Laurent facility, with its Belfast facility also now a long-time user of the system. Further installation projects are also under review. Phil concluded; „The whole project was delivered to our specification. The dedication and commitment from JETCAM to have people on-site and developing with us exceeded anything we had expected and helped to complete the installation, with the first project completed to schedule in only a couple of months. The composite project was based primarily on waste reduction, however there have been many other benefits which have continued to provide considerable additional savings.

Contact: Carol Hart
E: sales@camtek.co.uk


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