“What we value most about the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is the high degree of consistency of the system. With just a few clicks of the mouse, our application engineers can switch back and forth between simulation and construction mode, make adjustments to the milling unit and continue with the changed settings. In addition to saving time, this also ensures more quality, as possible collisions are recognized and resolved much faster. "
Timo Hees, Application Engineer at Waldrich Siegen GmbH & Co. KG

For machine tool manufacturer Waldrich Siegen, time savings and exceedingly high precision are key factors their customers consider when purchasing portal milling machines from the ProfiMill series.

 

 

 

Waldrich Siegen’s milling machines are used to mill particularly large and heavy workpieces, for shipbuilding, diesel engine production and the energy sector, such as turbine housings, for example. Waldrich Siegen is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of large machine tools and has been relying on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform since 2014 – with DELMIA Machining & CATIA V6 technology – as a complete solution to manufacture its machine components super efficiently and to sell special machines with clear 3D visualization and machining studies to support.

3DEXPERIENCE: 3-fold Application Technology Benefits

Waldrich Siegen uses the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to program the machining of customer workpieces, control collisions and carry out simulations. Only when everything runs smoothly in the simulation can the production of customer workpieces be approved by the application technology department.

“Because all machine designs and customer components are centrally located in the same database, a smaller amount of data has to be managed and at the same time the risk of” data theft “is minimized because no more physical storage media have to be exchanged,” explains Timo Hees. “Another big advantage of the central storage (“ Single Source of Truth ”) is the improved teamwork: Customer workpieces can now be processed by several colleagues at the same time. It is no longer necessary to ensure that a work step is first completed by an employee before the next can continue working in the same file. Overall, information and data are found faster. ”

Time Savings of Up to 80 Percent

In the past, due to the many machines of different types and sizes, a new simulation had to be created for each movement. Today, Waldrich Siegen uses a parameterized machine type, but uses different turning, milling and grinding units in the simulation, all of which are accessible in the database and can be exchanged as required. With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the creation of kinematics now only takes max. an hour, which used to take up to five hours.

Visualization for Sales

Sales also benefit enormously from the 3DEXPERIENCE functionality. The large machine tool is assembled in a modular system and the customer part is produced in the presentation on the screen. Before production begins, the entire operating sequence can be simulated and modified according to customer requirements. The very highly rendered, realistic animations and simulations in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform ensure a virtual product experience in real time and facilitate the consultation-intensive discussions of the individually manufactured machines.

Strong Technical Support

Waldrich Siegen has relied on TECHNIA’s advice and support for over ten years. The switch to the current release of the R2021x platform is also already planned in order to quickly implement the innovations in terms of kinematics and machining strategies. In this way, the machine tool manufacturer lives up to its primary goal – to always be state-of-the-art and to supply its customers with tailor-made large machine tools that keep setting new standards in terms of precision and performance.

Source: Waldrich Siegen