Investing in Total Solutions

Industry 4.0 is here and companies today research the most advanced technologies to manufacture their products, however certain sectors, such as aeronautical, use these technologies as just a starting point for achieving manufacturing excellence. Aircraft manufacturers, and their technical partners must be ready to accept every challenge in today’s world to achieve their goals of producing the highest quality products from simple to complex in the most efficient way possible.

Since 1972 Umbra Cuscinetti S.p.A. has been a valued partner to the aeronautical industry, and has grown over time to become a world leader in the design and manufacture of ball screws for the Aerospace industry. Umbra also manufactures electric spindles, milling heads and electro-mechanical actuators for both aeronautical and industrial applications. Umbra’s growth has transformed their parent company in Foligno to the multinational, UmbraGroup, with four offices located in Italy, Germany and the United States, employing over a thousand employees worldwide. Most of Umbra’s employees are located at the Perugia factory in Italy, dealing with the design and manufacturing of ball screws, ranging from 10mm up to 10 meters in length, mainly intended for applications in the aviation field. This was the first target market for Umbra, and they became the first manufacturer in the world (in the field of aeronautical screws) to make this particular part. "We export, with pride, more than 90 percent of what we produce here in Foligno, Italy to every airline in the world. Every airplane with over 100 seats has at least one component inside it that has been made in our factory. This is also thanks to the will and passion of our founder, Valter Baldaccini, who made this important growth possible, says Angelo Radicioni, Production Manager at Umbra Cuscinetti.

In today’s production departments, digital drawings are usually provided but the list of tools and CNC programs for manufacturing the simplest components are still manually developed, with more complex parts being machined using a CAD/CAM software system. "The goal we set for ourselves was to implement a CAM solution for even the easiest parts, usually used for more complex operations, to provide us with the total cycle time to determine the overall efficiency of our processes.’’ - explained Mauro Trasciatti, Production Supervisor. Umbra decided to implement ESPRIT CAD/CAM software by DP Technology, for their innovative improvements in CNC programming speed and increased productivity on the shop floor.

High-level performance with ESPRIT CAM

To meet the multiple demands of customers and those from Umbra’s own internal design team, the company increasingly pushed for more advanced machine tools to increase cycle time and to be more productive. ``We needed a machine tool solution that would allow flexibility and at the same time speed in standard operations – says, Gianluca Mercuri, Turning & Milling Specialist at Umbra Cuscinetti. ESPRIT CAM software provided us with everything we needed to run our advanced machine tools, and gave us the ability to save customzed milling and turning operations, both for the processes we use most, and for our non-standard processes. "

Ball screw being machined on a DMG MORI NT4250 at Umbra Group