Over the past few years, Nissan's Sunderland, UK, plant has become known as the most productive car plant in Europe. The plant's Press Engineering and Die Maintenance sections use software to improve die development and keep press tools in top shape.

All the plant's press tools are supplied from Japan, and it would clearly be too expensive to return them there for design modifications. So, Sunderland set up an NC facility based around an Okuma five-axis machining center. The investment was made to reduce new model introduction time by completing detailed tool changes in the UK rather than Japan, and to allow more efficient repair of trimming tools.

Previously, design changes and damaged cutting surfaces on the tools were built up with weld and then ground into shape by hand.

Now, a profile is digitized from the trim line on the press tool by fitting a Renishaw probe onto the Okuma machine. The captured data is then used in a combination of software packages supplied by Delcam Ltd. (Birmingham, England). Digitized geometry data is fed into both CopyCAD reverse engineering software and PowerShape hybrid modeler to recreate the trimming edges of the tool. A model of the trim edges is then passed to a PowerMill CAM package that cranks out machining data for the Okuma machine.