CERPI optimizes productivity and reliability with WorkNC and WorkNC-CAD

Cerpi was founded in 1991 by its managing director, Louis RISTIC, and today employs 10 people. CERPI specialises in machining complex geometry tooling equipment for moulds and dies. Their first customers were companies within the automobile industry, a sector well known to Louis Ristic as he started his career there. However he quickly realized that the Company needed to diversify. The arrival of 5-axis machining allowed CERPI to establish itself within the aeronautic industry.

<< The advent of 5-axis machining in WorkNC has been a great step forward for us because we now have all the functionality enabling us to create high performance 5-axis machining programs within the already familiar WorkNC environment. >>
Louis Ristic, Managing Director of Cerpi SA.

For the first two years of business CAM was contracted out, CERPI then acquired a CAM system in house, followed by WorkNC in 1995. The time savings, the ease of programming, and the increase in productivity in WorkNC were immediately apparent.”

“While sub-contracting for the automobile industry, I soon realised that using 5-axis machining for complex geometry parts would put us ahead of the competition and protect our margins. We rapidly acquired a 5-axis Jobs plano-milling machine with 4 metre X-axis travel and a 22 kW spindle for machining hard materials”, recalls Louis Ristic.

All that remained was to convince potential customers used to working with larger sub-contractors to work with CERPI. At the time many of them doubted CERPI’s long term prospects and its capacity to handle very complex jobs within tight delivery dates.

Louis Ristic needed all his energy and technical expertise to win over his customers’ technical staff and wary purchasing managers.

CERPI successfully penetrated the aeronautic market, as it had both the machine capacity for the parts required and the in-house expertise in machining light alloys and more exotic materials such as titan or inconel. CERPI have now produced countless prototypes and parts for different models of Airbus, as well as tooling equipment, especially those for the creation of layered composite parts.

This continued growth led to CERPI acquiring a second Jobs 5- axis machine in 2002, this time fitted with a 32 kW HSM spindle with a rotational speed of 10,000 rpm and a feed rate of 16m/mn. This is the milling centre used today to machine the first parts for the future A380.

However, NC machining is nothing without an efficient CAD/CAM system to prepare the jobs. “ It was actually via one of our subcontractors that we discovered WorkNC”, explains Eric Lavure, manager of the Engineering Department.

“We soon realized that WorkNC was so much easier to program for 3-axis machining. In addition, we could simulate the toolpaths on the screen to validate them and easily create several machining passes if necessary”.

WorkNC was complemented by WorkNC-CAD a little more than two years ago for tool designing purposes. Then, in June 2003, CERPI started testing the WorkNC 5-axis machining module on complex drilling jigs used for the assembly of the A380.

“The advent of 5-axis machining in WorkNC has been a great step forward for us because we now have all the functionality enabling us to create high performance 5- axis machining programs within the already familiar WorkNC environment. Because it is so easy to use we have cut programming times by a factor of 4 or 5. Furthermore we are able to modelize part geometry and milling centre kinematics in order to simulate and validate our programs on the screen before machining. This provides increased security, renders testing unnecessary, and lets us run machines unsupervised throughout the night which is especially useful for long finishing jobs”, concludes Louis Ristic.