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Reverse engineering fills gaps in press tool records
12 Jan 2008
Robin Chisnall set up CS-Products Ltd in 2000 to provide a tooling maintenance and repair service to local industry. It has since expanded to include the design and development of prototype and production tooling, components and equipment. Just over a year ago the Telford-based company invested in a digitiser, having identified a requirement for the ‘reverse engineering’ of tooling and components.
“Customers with large press shops, for example, don’t necessarily have drawings of the actual press tooling or any record of subsequent modifications,” he says.
Having invested in two new XYZ machine tools and using digitised data, CS-Products can now ‘reverse engineer’ replacement tooling and components, introduce further modifications if required, and machine to a high degree of accuracy and surface finish.”
Prompted by an increasing demand for the fast delivery of prototype tooling and components, CS-Products installed its first XYZ machine tool, a Mini Mill 560 compact vertical machining centre in 2005, followed a year later by a 15 XYZ 710 VMC.
“We opted for the Mini Mill because it has a good-sized work envelope, it is affordable, and it is quick on one-offs as well as batch work,” says Robin Chisnall. “However, as the business grew we needed a second machining centre with a bigger table and greater X axis travel to accommodate larger components and to allow for the machining of more than one component in a single set-up when fast response is all-important.”
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