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40 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST February/March 2018 P remier Manufacturing Company (Tualatin, Or- egon) designs and manufactures heavy duty cou- pling components used for tractor-trailers and construction equipment. In business since 1924, the com- pany produces parts that link trailers to dump trucks and off road construction equipment as well connectors used be- tween double and triple trailers hauled by over the highway trucks. The products include couplings, drawbar eyes, hinge assemblies, dolly jacks and accessories. The products play a critical role in safety, so strength and reliability are overriding considerations. Accordingly, many of Premier Manufacturing’s products are cast in Permalloy, proprietary alloy steel developed by the company to handle rough, abrasive applications. The alloy’s unique properties cause it to work-harden at contact surfaces and create a tough, wear-resistant outer shell. Presently, most of the coupling components are sand cast at foundries. Premier sends the foundry actual-size physi- cal models of the parts called patterns. After sand is packed around a pattern to make a mold, the pattern is removed and molten steel is poured into the void to make each part. The cast material is so tough to machine that finish dimen- sions of the cast components are near net shape, with hand- grinding performed to final finish dimensions. Many of Premier’s components are being retooled, some of this is due to wear but more often it’s to yield a better part for customer’s needs or more accurate dimensions to im- prove secondary processing efficiency. Zach McCurter, the company’s mechanical engineer, reverse-engineer’s older parts and creates CAD files for them. During the reverse- engineered process the components are then reviewed and optimized to yield a better modern-day component via FEA analysis and other proprietary processes. Ultimately the new CAD files are passed over to WilliamGillin the machine shop supervisor for the tool path generation, verification and machining of the tooling. . “This whole retooling process is a very interesting way to spend time. I enjoy it,” Gillin said. The new patterns are machined from cast iron or a ma- chinable polymer. Many of Premier’s connecting compo- nents have free-flowing, 3-D contours, and the patterns must reproduce them exactly. To efficiently machine the complex shapes, Premier recently acquired a five-axis ver- PREMIER MANUFACTURING COMPANY Article Provided by Lynn Gorman Communications LLC PATTERNS OF PRODUCTIVITY William Gillin, Machine Shop Supervisor for toolpath generation – Premier Manufacturing Company, Tualatin, OR. In addition to a host of other benefits, reliable machining verification permits Gillin to make best use of his time. According to Gillin, NCSIMUL allows him to set up a complex job with a lot of simultaneous motion, take it out to the machine, hit “go” and walk away, able to focus on another task.