WorkNC Software Plays Role In Vehicle Development

Sescoi's WorkNC CAM/CAD software is helping in the design and development of a vehicle concept that addresses traffic congestion and the overall CO2 impact produced during the lifecycle of a car. Designed and developed in the UK by Gordon Murray Design, which is based in Shalford, Surrey, the T.25 City Car and the Istream manufacturing process started from an idea first conceived by Gordon Murray in 1993.

Gordon Murray, who formed the company, designed a series of Brabham Formula 1 (F1) racing cars that enabled Nelson Piquet to win the world championship in 1981 and 1983. Within two years of moving to McLaren as technical director, his Honda-powered McLaren had won 15 out of 16 grand-prix races and gave Ayrton Senna his first driver's championship. Subsequently, as head of McLaren Cars, he designed road-going supercars - the McLaren F1 and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren - before forming Gordon Murray Design in 2007.

The key design elements for the T.25 and the Istream are for a very small vehicle that protects personal mobility, that is economical and safe to own, that is fun and stylish to drive and that has a low lifecycle carbon footprint. To achieve these aims and to make the car as spacious as possible inside required considerable effort on vehicle packaging, with many design iterations. This was further complicated by the principles of Istream, which demanded the flat packing of the vehicle for transportation, ready for final assembly in end-user markets.

Jon Ingleby, prototyping applications manager, uses WorkNC to produce the body panels for the styling studio model as well as for the seating buck, which is used to evaluate the space inside the vehicle. Machining the models and moulds, which can be full size, is carried out using the company's ITP overhead gantry CNC mill. He said: 'We have a wide range of responsibilities in the design studio so the software's ease of use is very important to us. 'WorkNC is sometimes not used for a few weeks, but because it is so simple to operate we can jump onto it again and start programming immediately,' added Ingleby.

A range of rapid-prototyping methods is used in the styling studio, including conventional pattern making, fused deposition modelling, CNC milling and composite panel production. To compress development times, engineers need to be skilled in all these areas and have the means of working on several tasks simultaneously. Ingleby added: 'There are three cycles of body design during the vehicle development program, from wind-tunnel models to a full-size model, which we can machine on the ITP gantry mill using 3+2 machining techniques.

'In WorkNC, it takes about one to two hours to program the roughing toolpaths and, while cutting is under way, we program the finishing paths,' he said. Gordon Murray Design uses Catia V5 to model the T.25. 'A'-class surfaces are imported into WorkNC ready for machining. Ingleby said: 'The CAD interface is very reliable and WorkNC is tolerant of small imperfections in the model, saving the considerable amount of time it can take to repair these.

'Once machining has been completed, we inspect the part with a touch probe and compare it with the original model,' he added. Having these facilities in house enables Gordon Murray Design to ensure the confidentiality of the project and produce new prototypes within one or two days. Ingleby said: '[WorkNC] has enabled us to compress two months' work into one week.'.

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