Production engineering solutions required by many leading Swiss watch-makers are installed in their CNC machines when they buy them. Bumotec, based in the tiny Swiss village of Sâles just a few miles from the Prealp mountains, pride themselves on not simply producing standard machines.
Almost every one they supply has been trialled by manufacturing the customer’s parts on it, and comes complete with the Alphacam CNC programs for those parts. All Bumotec machines are adapted to provide specific solutions addressing the individual needs of each customer, ranging from 3-axes to 38-axes, using Fanuc controllers for machines with up to 25-axes and Num controllers for those above 25.
On demand solutions A number of specialist macros for the watch-making industry have been developed by Alphacam’s Swiss reseller MW Programmation. They include machining perlage (aspects of decoration such as circles, spirals and linear patterns); sequential numbering to automatically generate serial numbers of pieces without needing to change the NC program manually; palpage, which defines exact placement of the piece before machining; and diamond settings, allowing parameters of the amount, size, and space between stones to be input. MW Programmation work closely with Bumotec on every aspect of their customers’ needs, including the macros, post processors, training and a technical support hotline. While Bumotec provide their customers with initial training on Alphacam if they need it, MW have two training rooms at their headquarters in Malleray, in northern Switzerland, where they can tailor both basic and advanced courses to individual customers’ requirements.
Partnership for the customer’s success Director Marcel Weber gives an example of where they worked directly with a Bumotec customer to address their need for machining parts by following the profile with a specific tool to create a chamfer. “As the main spindle doesn’t have a rotation frequency it had to be angular controlled, so we developed a macro to control this all the way along the part.”
New waveform 3D roughing strategy A recent addition to Alphacam’s functionality is a new Waveform 3D Roughing Strategy, which Marcel Weber says will be of particular benefit to the watch industry. “The new high speed machining technique maintains a constant tool cutting load by ensuring consistent tool engagement into the material. The tool moves in a smooth path to avoid sharp changes in direction, maintaining its velocity, dramatically decreasing the machining cycle time.”
MW Programmation SA Rue Charles Schäublin 2 Case postale 242 CH-2735 Malleray T. +41 32 491 65 30 F. +41 32 491 65 35 [email protected] - www.mwprog.ch
