AT YOUR SERVICE

Jaivel Europe is a UK centre of excellence that offers its customers a range of benefits including digital manufacturing services, which VERICUT software plays a key role in helping to deliver

Jaivel, an international engineering services group, was originally started in 1998 by Vipul Vachhani to service the Indian advanced engineering market. He went on to set up two centres of excellence. The first is a manufacturing facility in Raijkot where all CAD activity for the group takes place and the second in Mumbai is purely for CNC programming.

With a growing European client base, Vachhani realised that a European office would be beneficial to not only increase the company’s existing orders but also help to address the obvious shortage of engineering staff available. So, in 2005 he opened Jaivel Europe knowing that the UK had an insufficient supply of good quality engineers. This Mansfield-based facility is the hub for all UK customer facing activities and offers a number of key solutions. Business development director, Barry Lomas, explains: “We have three overlapping business streams. With the knowledge and capacity available at our facilities in India, we provide outsourced machining or programming services to various sectors, including aerospace, power generation, motorsport and the medical industry. Currently we have access to around 70 engineers in the UK and India who can be placed with customers as their workload demands either on-site, off-site or off-shore.”

The type of service that Jaivel offers it customers can be termed ‘Digital Manufacturing Services’. Lomas explains just what this involves: “Typically, in the aerospace sector the whole process starts when a customer receives a contract for the manufacture of a number of parts on a repeat basis – normally per month. As a turnkey solution we’ll take it from that point right through to the final stage, which for us is the First Article Inspection Report (FAIR). Working with the customer’s engineering department we cover the entire process, we decide on methods of manufacture and the machine tools to be used.”

Hand-in-hand
While the manufacturing engineering is being done in the UK, the information is shared with India so that the resource level can be adjusted to achieve any set deadlines. It is a robust model and the processes and systems work well. Jaivel Europe’s customers can have a whole turnkey solution or they can access parts of it, or just hire resources as needed, effectively accessing and managing extra resources. “We are currently working with a number of tier one and two companies,” says Lomas. “We work hand-in-hand with the company’s engineering team to level out the peaks and troughs of resource problems many companies face.

As different businesses use a variety of software, Jaivel Europe uses all the leading CAD/CAM packages such as Catia, Unigraphics/Siemens NX, Solidworks and Delcam’s PowerMill.

Whichever software is used to create the NC code every component program is proven using VERICUT as an independent verification of the safe motion of the tool and machine dynamics. “We pride ourselves on the way we approach projects, which may be slightly outside of the box,” explains Lomas. “We provide the customer with all the information so they can see that it is different to how they would have tackled it. So, VERICUT becomes invaluable as we approach these projects, whether it’s engine components or landing gear using different methods. To achieve cost savings and such like you have to ‘shake the tree’ to see if you can do something unusual and VERICUT allows us to prove the process concept.”

He continues: “A great example of this involved a brief from a company that was manufacturing impellers on a 4-spindle Lichti machine, which was an old machine to say the least and only two of the spindles were making good components. The company ordered a new Lichti machine that was on an extended delivery time, so it purchased two single spindle Hermle CNC machines. Our brief was to make the part for much less than it cost with the old process, which was difficult because we had to include the value of the

new machines at around £300,000 with single spindles, as opposed to something that was written off in costing terms with twin spindles. So, we developed a true 5-axis plunge milling approach. The old method was to rough machine, semi finish, and finish, so we eliminated the semi finishing and went straight from a roughing cut with the 5-axis plunge milling getting it close enough so that we could eliminate that next step and go straight into the finishing cut.”

Model behaviour
With the cycle time dramatically reduced, VERICUT proved that the CNC code was going to achieve the required savings and that no potential pindle/workpiece collisions would damage the new machine tools. Jaivel actually uses Vericut to present potential solutions to the customers using screen shots and animation in some instances. And, as part of the turnkey project, Jaivel often has to model the machines for the customer. “Sometimes they already have that information if it’s a legacy machine, and the manufacturing data is believed to be robust. However, we do not want to crash any machine, and no matter how good your engineers are it is an absolute must that we have the confidence. Running a program through Vericut makes sure that it is doing exactly what we expect it to do. The last thing we want is to damage a customer’s machine tool or collide with a component which results in manufacturing down-time,” comments Lomas.

He points to another advantage of using VERICUT: “For project work, it is imperative that we program and deliver the various new parts on a priority basis. We have just completed a project with over 130 components, and when you are dealing with that number delivered on a specified date detailed capacity planning in terms of changing from the obsolete to a new product is required. That’s where VERICUT kicks in, giving you very accurate cycles times so that you know how much capacity is available which allows you to plan and not fail on the delivery. I would say that VERICUT is certainly required on new product introduction and streamlining or re-engineering existing components – taking the cost out.”

Reaping the rewards
Since it was set up, Jaivel Europe has built a reputation for delivering quality manufacturing services to its customers and VERICUT has played a key role in this success. “When we established the engineering services side of the business, we knew that we needed VERICUT and that the software would make life easier and give us more confidence. Our customers trust the software and that is important to us,” recalls Vachhani. “The decision was straightforward; it was Vericut that we were going to invest in. Paramount to the choice was that it is a totally independent verification of the NC code – it’s checking and double checking and not using the same source code to check through the work you’ve done.”

Plans for further growth at Jaivel Europe include satellite offices in the UK North West and South West, where strong aerospace cluster groups have formed. Other research is being carried out regarding the potential for offices in France and the US.