CLIENT CASE STUDIES

About the Company

Established as an independent company in 1984, Blade was acquired by Gardner Group in January 2011. Blade is a leading supplier of tooling, technical services and front end services to the Aerospace and IGT investment casting industry.

Blade is able to supply all types of tooling which is supported by the industry wide technical expertise of more than 50 employees and our comprehensive and modern manufacturing assets. Our products, services, assets and expertise combine to provide our customers with truly industry leading lead times and total cost competitiveness. Blade has full ISO approval and is an accredited supplier to Rolls Royce with immediate access to the substantial resources of Gardner Group.

Requirements

Blade decided to allow the programming of our Mazak CNC machines to be carried out on the shop floor and needed a user friendly system that would be easy for our toolmakers to learn. NCGCAM allowed this and also catered for the 3 + 2 requirement needed on our growing capacity of 5 axis machining.

Results from Purchasing NCG CAM

• Programming bottle necks have been controlled after initial installation of 3 NCG CAM seats.
• Cost reduction shown with no time wasted between programmer and operator.
• Lead times for 3 and 5 axis machining have reduced dramatically since the introduction of direct CAM methods.
• Confidence of programmer / operator has been increased and allows for unmanned hours being gained.
• Ease of use allowed other employees to learn the software, due to this we now have 9 NCG CAM seats installed.