A company specialising in industrial rubber injectionmoulds and cold runner blocks for the automotive sector uses WORKNC to create3+2 axis toolpath programs across a range of eight CNC machine tools andWORKPLANto consolidate a variety of information from sales orders to invoices.

Dixence is an SME operating with around 30 staff out of a1,500 m2 workshop and 500 m2 engineering department at Erbray, in WesternFrance.

Their main business is designing and manufacturing toolingequipment, and manufacturing moulds for all-rubber bonded inserts, and plastic,metal and rubber parts. Managing Director Gérard Beloeil says these can beinjection, compression, regulated transfer or cold plate moulds produced indifferent grades of steel; pre-treated, hardened, and with a special coating.

“The finished parts are used to support gearboxes, engines,exhaust pipes, suspension systems, engine sealings, and sound proofing.”  

Working for major suppliers of rubber parts around theworld, including France, Germany, Spain, USA, UK, Russia, Turkey, Portugal,around 80 per cent of their output is for automotive contracts, with the restgoing to customers in the energy, cosmetics and railway industries. They haverecently made a REP V710 L 50 rubber injection press available for validatingmoulds produced for the international market. At the customers' request, mouldsare tested directly on-site at Dixence avoiding any costly part returns…givinga real guarantee of quality.

About three-quarters of the total production goes through WORKNC, which Milling Sector Manager Fabrice Provost says is fundamental toensuring that the moulds coming off the machine tools are of the high precision required. “The software’s 3D functions are particularly important to us as weuse 3+2 axis machining, but can’t program 3D manually。And since newenhancements have been made for 2D operations such as manual and semi-automaticdrilling, weuse all 2D toolpaths as they’re now more flexible.”

WORKNC programs three Huron and two Mazak verticalmilling centres, and two Mazak horizontal palletised milling centres to produce the moulds and blocks, along withone HSM milling centre for machining electrodes. “It’s this software/machine tandem that allows us to achieve a high level of precision. The two go hand in hand.'

Initially, the mould CAD files are sent to theEngineering Department to check the project’s feasibility and to determine thedifferent steps required to produce the tool. Each part of the mould isidentified and listed, and a bill of materials is inserted into WORKPLAN. Basedon that information, a set of documents is generated, containing full detailsabout the mould, which will be used by the purchasing document and shopfloor,allowing work to start on toolingelements. Machining information aboutthe mould’s individual components means the milling and turning team can assignthem to specific machines, and the files are opened in WORKNC for the toolpathsto be programmed.

“Our programmers often use standard WORKNC toolpaths suchas 3-axis Finishing and Contour Remachining, which we find perfect forproducing a high-quality finish on curved surfaces where there are no rightangles. And the comprehensive Global Roughing functions are extremelyefficient, producing exactly the results we need.”

Even though some parts they produce are similar, all mouldsmanufactured by Dixence are different. Generally, they make two new mould toolseach week. They also produce one cold runner block, which is positioned on themould, meaning they can multiply the number of injection points forrubber-based components. “An important feature of our process is that we designa cold runner block for each project, so it is specific to each mould. Thisoffers a means of reducing material costs for our customers, especially asrubber can’t be recycled.”

He says using WORKNC has improved productivity andreduced errors on finished parts. “The workshop functions round the clock,unsupervised during the night. With the full range of WORKNC toolpaths, all ourmachines will soon be able to run during the night, increasing productivityeven further over a 24-hour period.” 

Dixence also use WORKNC’s sister brand, WORKPLAN as theirproduction control system. Gérard Beloeil says they previously worked with anAccess database and paper-based invoicing. “But with ever-increasing productionlevels we needed to avoid duplicating data processing.”

With WORKPLAN they consolidate allinformation, such as sales orders, purchase orders, time management, deliverynotes and invoices, which is relative to each project. “We’ve also got fulltraceability on purchasing, raw materials – including quantity and cost – andpurchasing material for individual mould component, which means we can makequick and accurate decisions.

Anumber of modules are particularly important to them:Job Management, which manages sales related tasks and administration, fromorder confirmation through to delivery…allowing easy access to allproject-related documents.

The Purchasing module includes their forecastpurchase budget based on the bills of material directly imported into WORKPLAN,along with supplier quotations. “We can easily monitor and control raw materialcosts and determine minimum stock levels.

The Time Management function allows real timemonitoring of machine utilisation, the status of outsourced tasks, and theremaining time required to finish a task. “We often have similar tools toproduce, so we can simply look for a previous project, copy it, and make thenecessary modifications.”

And thanks to the Sales Activitymodule, order forms and invoices are generated with just a few clicks, as allthe necessary information has already been fed into the system. “This avoidsduplicated data entry errors, and means we can monitor invoices daily, andchase payment to maintain a reasonable cash flow.”

Concluding, Gérard Beloeil says: “With all data aboutmaterial quantities, costs, and time spent on tasks, recorded in WORKPLAN, wecan quickly calculate the cost budget of our moulds, and progressively improveour profitability.”