Stepping up to the challenge

END USER: Ansco Machine Co., (330) 929-8181, www.ansco-machine.com

SOLUTION PROVIDER: DP Technology Corp., (800) 627-8479, www.espritcam.com

CHALLENGE: More efficiently program large mill-turn vertical turret lathes.

SOLUTION: CAM software that can program complex mill-turn parts using subprograms.

Ansco Machine Co. is a family-owned job shop specializing in milling and turning. Ansco primarily serves customers in the steel mill, energy, automation, fluid power, liquid natural gas, oil and gas, and offshore drilling industries.

Ansco, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, opened in 1991 with two Bridgeports and a handful of manual lathes and vertical turret lathes (VTLs). A few years later, the company acquired its first CNC machine, a 1979 Warner & Swasey 2SC, thrusting the company into the world of CAD/CAM software.

Ansco initially programmed with a simple 2D lathe package. Despite its simplicity, the software served the company well until Ansco began to expand and its needs became more complex. After outgrowing its original building and moving twice, Ansco now employs 50 people and has 14 CNC lathes, seven horizontal machining centers, five VTLs and four vertical machining centers in its 38,000-sq.-ft. facility.

Ansco Machine Applications Engineer Dave Sterling stands next to a suction manifold and the company’s DMG Mori DMU 65 monoBLOCK. All images courtesy of Ansco Machine.

As Ansco’s projects grew larger and more complicated, the company knew that it needed a better way to program its large mill-turn VTL machines. “We were having to do manual code edits on every feature we made,” said Dave Sterling, applications engineer and the son of Ansco owner Mike Sterling. “I used to write main and subprograms by hand in order to use the machines’ polar interpolation feature. This was OK for straightforward parts, but having to create an individual program with hand edits for more-complicated parts consumed an excessive amount of time.”