Shop Survives by Taking On the Difficult Work

When the Chips are Down, Bet on Proven Technology

Rick Denny started working in a shop in 1965, and learned NC programming in 1970. Moving forward, he worked at large and small job shops, in machining, engineering, and management, never straying from NC programming. With experience from shop floor to front office, he launched his own company in 1994, recruiting stepson Mike Andersen as equal partner. A home equity loan funded the start-up, enabling the purchase of a Fadal VMC. “Then we rented enough space from another shop to have two feet on either side of the machine,” says Denny, “and we took the plunge, to create Blue Chip Engineering.”

Initially, Denny worked part time, while Andersen worked full time, gaining the experience that enables him to run the shop today. Within a year, the duo built a rotary axis for the Fadal, and began to build their chip-making arsenal. By 2003, the company included 20 employees and 10 CNCs, including two 5-axis VMCs, one lathe, and a programmable CMM, all housed within their 4,600 sq-ft facility in Ramsey, Minn, just northwest of Minneapolis.
Employees were enjoying several benefits, including profit sharing, and even professional backrubs, when a medical customer stopped machining medical components and began stamping them. Losing the customer, Blue Chip had to lay off half of its employees. That’s when Denny and Andersen decided to find more difficult work that was not likely to be lost, and realized that a prior job had provided the tools for their pursuit.

In 2000, Blue Chip had taken on the job of developing a machining process for a boat propeller manufacturer, including the fixturing, cut direction, cutter sizes, and speeds and feeds to efficiently machine props from NIBRAL, an alloy used for its resistance to oxidation. “From my pre-Blue Chip experience, I knew we could do the job,” says Denny. “We had four Fadal and two Burgmaster CNCs at the time, but we needed an advanced CAM system to handle the surface machining. That’s why we decided to purchase GibbsCAM.”

Blue Chip received AutoCAD surfaces, and GibbsCAM extracted geometry from the model, made tool offsets and toolpaths. They used the 2-curve flow machining routine of GibbsCAM, which allowed cutting along the flow lines of the surfaces. When cutting in 3D, two-curve flow machining leaves a much better surface finish than lace cutting because it's all done in the same direction. With lace cutting, going in a different direction with every other pass, the finish is different between the conventional and climb cuts. Says Denny, “GibbsCAM also has spiraling cuts, so when the tool goes around, there are no step-over marks. These cutting methods are just two of its many features that make our jobs faster and easier.”

The customer had sent four engineers to watch the process, and it worked out very well. According to Denny, the same machining pattern is visible on many machined props currently available. The project did not result in more machining work, but Blue Chip learned GibbsCAM in depth, which prepared them for the challenge they faced three years later.

“That job forced us to dive into GibbsCAM and learn all we could about it. Just as we abandoned our old CAD system when we adopted SolidWorks, we abandoned our previous CAM software, and stopped using it completely,” adds Mike Andersen. “Now we do everything with GibbsCAM. We don't use anything else. Our shop talks Gibbs. It's our language. It's in the water.”

After the layoff, Blue Chip started prospecting for advanced surface milling work, gaining jobs making medical instruments, orthopedic implants, and surgical “gauges” known as trials, plus aerospace parts, automotive components, and machined rapid-prototypes.
The combination of SolidWorks and GibbsCAM has opened a lot of doors for Blue Chip Engineering. As Anderson says, "The combination has been exceptional. I don't miss my old CAD and CAM systems one bit."

Two doors that Denny always wanted opened are those that lead to machining as the alternative to handwork done by sculptors and by automotive high-performance shops that grind ports on cylinder heads. A Blue Chip customer opened one of those doors.

In 2004, sculptor Tom Shannon was commissioned to create a sculpture as an award by the TED community, an international organization that promotes the betterment of life through technology, entertainment and design. Its annual 4-day conference of about 1000 participants, comprises presentations of new ideas and the awarding of the TED Prize to three individuals who “positively impact life on this planet.”

Shannon contacted a large medical-product job shop to machine part of his creation, an aluminum sphere which is suspended and supported above a magnetic base strictly by magnetic repulsion. Too busy to take on the project, the shop, a Blue Chip Engineering customer, referred Shannon to Blue Chip.

The main component of the sculpture, an 8-inch diameter sphere, was to weigh a pound or less, and had to incorporate, on its surface, three patterns centered on different poles, representing the number of recipients and the main disciplines of the TED community.
Blue Chip know-how, SolidWorks CAD, and a heavy reliance on GibbsCAM did the job. The CAD design of the surface patterns had been developed with a different CAD system. Blue Chip imported the file into SolidWorks to create hemispheres with a flange at the parting line, an internal hollow to form the walls, and a mechanism to lock the hemispheres together. They used GibbsCAM to program the toolpath patterns and exterior surface finish.

Once they had the toolpath programmed, they took advantage of another system feature. “We used GibbsCAM’s Cut Part Rendering,” says Andersen. “We rely on it for everything. If the toolpath doesn't gouge on the screen, it won't gouge on the machine. Sometimes I'll run a job without a dry run. That's the kind of confidence we've developed. We couldn't attain that level of confidence without GibbsCAM.”

Denny says they found an additional use for the feature, showing the customer a rendering of the machined part for approval before machining. “The software shows you how the machined finish and texture will look. It was perfect for this application because it was one of aesthetics,” he adds. “We took screen captures of the rendered part from various angles, then e-mailed them to Tom Shannon. We eliminated test cuts, plus shipping and travel for both of us.”

From an 8-inch diameter billet, a CNC lathe formed the inner surface of each hemisphere, roughed the exterior, machined a flange to mate the halves, bored eight holes on the flange for locating pins to achieve registration between the two identical hemispheres, and tapped eight holes for 10-24 screws.

Each part was bolted to a mandril with the threaded holes, and fixtured for surface machining. Because the weight requirement was so restrictive, the wall thickness had to be reduced to .040 in. Finally, the triple pattern was cut into the surfaces such that the design appeared to be machined as a one-piece sphere, continuous and perfectly matched when the hemispheres were mated. For a good finish, they used a 1/4 in. poly-crystalline diamond ball end mill and polished the surface to a mirror finish.

Blue Chip made the hemispheres, and sculptor Tom Shannon mounted rare-earth magnets inside, assembling them into spheres, which he floated on magnetic bases of his making to create the sculptures. An .018 diameter, metal cable “tether” centered each sphere above its base to prevent its wandering away from the magnetic field and falling if bumped.

The sculpture was first awarded in 2005, the first of three recipients being Bono, the Irish rock star, for his continuing humanitarian work in Africa. Blue Chip also machined the TED awards again for 2006 and 2007. This year the award was given to President Bill Clinton, war photographer James Natwey, and scientist E.O. Wilson.

In having the first sculpture machined by Blue Chip, Shannon learned that he could cut time off his design stage, and has since directed additional work to the shop. He usually sends a sketch, from which Blue Chip develops a CAD model in SolidWorks, returning screen images for review. Then they proceed with any desired design and NC programming iterations, sending GibbsCAM Cut Part Rendering images to Shannon before machining.

Denny says that Blue Chip owes its survival to GibbsCAM and other leading edge technology. “If we hadn't invested in something like GibbsCAM, we would be out of business. GibbsCAM, SolidWorks, 5-axis machines, and our Zeiss solids-programmable CMM will keep us competitive and growing.”

“But we also need to keep employees trained and up to date on the technology,” he adds. “My daughter Paula, for example, is the primary programmer of the Zeiss CMM, uses SolidWorks, and recently completed basic training in GibbsCAM.”

The shop will be machining Shannon’s sculpture for the 2008 thru 2010 TED awards. In the interim, they’ll be working on other Shannon projects and doing difficult machining for other industries. Long past the threat of failure, their wish list includes a return to profit sharing for employees, another Mori-Seiki with 4th and 5th rotary axis, and another seat of GibbsCAM. Apparently, the backrubs can wait.