Cutting Machining Steps Draws More Aerospace Business

A Seattle-area job shop supplying parts to aerospace, marine, and general industrial customers recently installed a GROB G550T five-axis universal machining center. For Honeycutt Manufacturing, the investment has been a “game changer.”

The family-owned and operated machine shop had been running two-axis lathes and vertical machines for a number of years -- and doing quite well, with business largely from various Boeing units and other aerospace-related companies in the area supplying Boeing. As General Manager Nick Honeycutt explained, “We didn’t feel we had the workload for a five-axis machine at the time our local machine tool dealer, Vince Selway of Machine Tools NW, approached us about the GROB machines.”

Then, Honeycutt acquired a four-axis horizontal machine: the results were acceptable, and some savings had been realized.

Next, a particular job opportunity presented itself and Honeycutt purchased its first GROB five-axis machine, a G550T 5, with advanced machining technologies.

After the commissioning and training, including sessions with the Siemens CNC account manager Daniel Vitullo, who gave the operators assistance with the Sinumerik 840D sl control, the first parts were produced to spec on the very first day of run-time.

Within two weeks, Honeycutt Manufacturing had brought in various customers to see the GROB machine in action -- and the result was that the shop was awarded more work.

“We were able to reduce the machining set-up operations from six to two with the GROB,” Honeycutt explained, “cutting cycle times by 50% and reducing our tooling costs about 60-70%.”

Within 30 days, the shop was ready to buy a second GROB with Siemens CNC. Now, Honeycutt is planning a building addition to house three or four more machines.

While much of the aerospace work is aluminum with very high removal rate, a further advantage emerged with the GROB-Siemens combination. On jobs involving Inconel and titanium, the power of the machine plus the 0.0006-in. typical accuracies and 32-Ra finishes they were able to achieve, won the machine shop even more work, according to Honeycutt. Such standards of accuracy and finish-quality are critical for the parts produced, which range from aluminum leading edge to titanium elevator controls on the for the Boeing737, lab devices for precision measurement, and parts for commercial vessels and luxury crafts.

According to Andy Krupp, a universal machine applications engineer for GROB, the developer works to supply machines to serve automotive, aerospace, mold-and-die, and energy industries, but it’s involved in emerging technology too, such as e-mobility systems. “We build our five-axis machining centers for our metalworking customers, plus we can supply full automation cells to meet their specific production requirements.”

He continued: “The GROB horizontal five-axis design is unique and offers many advantages over conventional five-axis vertical machines on the market. All these machines are built at our factory in Bluffton, Ohio. On this Honeycutt project, the addition of our five-axis machines helped to significantly improve their aerospace part production, while maintaining the highest quality standards.”

Of the SINUMERIK 840D sl CNC, Krupp noted it is “the only control for special complex machining options we’ve developed on our machines, including multi-tasking mill-turn, skiving (used for gear production), high-end hobbing, cross-feed spindle configurations and more.

“One of the great things about using the SINUMERIK 840D control is its ease of use,” Krupp continued. “Training people who have used other brands of CNC and bringing them to a comfort level using Siemens has actually been quite simple. Inputting information and using the control seem to be much more intuitive than with other brands and we’ve found this cuts the learning curve, significantly.”

“The capabilities of the GROB machines with Siemens helped sales at Honeycutt, almost immediately,” according to Vince Selway of Machine Tools NW. “My customers who are most successful are the ones who follow the proper protocol for training, invest in it, and take the time to do it properly. They go to the factory, meet the people at GROB, get a deep understanding of the machine’s functionalities and diligently complete the training for their operators. This all contributes to more success with the machines, in a much shorter time span.”

For Honeycutt’s five-axis machines the SINUMERIK CNC is outfitted with the GROB-4 Pilot control panel, so the machine builder can incorporate additional applications to the 24-in. (HMI.)

“We had a lot of experience with other control brands, but the speed and power of the GROB five-axis machines with SINUMERIK made the higher-level CNC very necessary to execute our complex operations on a single machining center,” recalled Nick Honeycutt.

He also noted the Siemens control on the GROB machines easily interfaces with the Honeycutt CAD and CAM platforms the shop uses, Dassault SolidWorks and Open Mind HyperMill.

Honeycutt Manufacturing is running multiple shifts, seven days a week. And its continuing to expand to meet the additional business being generated by its GROB five-axis machines and other services, including waterjet and laser marking.