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Manufacturing engineer Dakota Hollingsworth sets up the Hermle C400 with a HS Flex. It is Zone 5’s newest 5 axis machining center.

Manufacturing engineer Dakota Hollingsworth sets up the Hermle C400 with a HS Flex. It is Zone 5’s newest 5 axis machining center.

Walking into Zone 5 Technologies’ headquarters in San Luis Obispo, instantly you are blown away by what you see. Their 20,000sq.ft. building near the SLO airport houses engineering, manufacturing, and assembly for what could be described as a niche aerospace company.

Zone 5 is a vertically integrated aerospace company concentrating on providing air launched effects and unmanned air systems to the Department of Defense. By developing and filling capability gaps, Zone 5 finds solutions for specific issues identified by their DOD customers. “Originally Zone 5 was focused on supporting the Air Force Research Laboratory [AFRL] doing ground up prototype work,” explains Zone 5 mechanical engineer Dakota Hollingsworth. “This established a capability that allows us to rapidly design and iterate full weapon systems in a matter of a few months. We are able to get to the point of our first test flights faster than other large name contractors.” We have about a dozen programs in the works right now. All flight-based projects, some programs focusing on counter unmanned aerial systems [c-UAS] or others ranging to low-cost cruise missiles. I’ve never been bored since I joined the company in 2022. Even though we are soon starting our path to production, all the R&D brings new challenges every day. Each week it is new parts, and new manufacturing solutions. We’ve seen tremendous growth in the last two years. A little over a decade ago it was just a small aerospace company that was comprised of a small but dedicated group of seasoned mechanical and aerospace engineers. It was reminiscent of our local Cal Poly engineering SAE racing teams. Late nights, lots of work, go home, and do it again the next day. Everybody wore a lot of hats. We still are small enough that most people take on multiple roles throughout certain processes, but when I was hired, we had around 25 people and now we are over 65 and still hiring.”

Zone 5 shows off a display version of CLEAVER, their low-cost cruise missile to military officials in Washington DC. PALADIN is a fully autonomous drone on drone attack weapon. Radar alerts of a possible threat and it self deploys to engage. Humans give the kill order and the “skynet” 12-gauge rounds do the rest. Every aspect of PALADIN was designed, tested, and built in-house at Zone 5.

Left – Zone 5 shows off a display version of CLEAVER, their low-cost cruise missile to military officials in Washington DC. Right – PALADIN is a fully autonomous drone on drone attack weapon. Radar alerts of a possible threat and it self deploys to engage. Humans give the kill order and the “skynet” 12-gauge rounds do the rest. Every aspect of PALADIN was designed, tested, and built in-house at Zone 5.

2018 was a big year for Zone 5, they dove headfirst into 5 axis and brought the manufacturing in-house. “We were outsourcing all our parts and molds at the time,” explains Dakota. “Everyone here is well versed in the manufacturing processes so finally it came to a point of just pulling a trigger on our first machine. We didn’t want to mess around with multiple operations, and 5th axis machining is a fast way to prototype parts. Our first machine was a Haas UMC 750, then we added a Haas UMC 1000. Those machines changed how we functioned as a company. We could now program a part, set it up and run it with no lead-times. Eventually we needed a large 3 axis machine for bigger parts like wings and airframes and got a Haas VF7. Most people use a VF7 for 20 parts on 20 vices, but not us. The Strongback on our program CLEAVER, for example, begins as a 1400lb aluminum block and ends up finished around 75 pounds. With all that material removal we need to clear out the chips every 30 minutes. We learned a lot in a short period of time. As our experience grew so did our need for a more advanced 5 axis machining center.”

Beginning as a concept and finishing in the air, everything from the design of their flight computers to the production of the wings takes place internally. With multiple programs in different stages, Zone 5 is essentially a build as needed environment. Manufacturability is a key element to any design, and they don’t just engineer a tight tolerance because they can, they spec the build by what they need. “One of my roles as a manufacturing engineer is almost like a gate keeper,” explains Dakota. “As a mechanical engineer myself, it is my job to make sure that before a part goes into production, we are not making it more difficult than necessary. I like a pretty part with tight tolerances as much as the next engineer, but it needs to be justified before going on the machines. I review and approve all the designs, get them pushed to manufacturing, Darin and I program the parts, set up the processes, and schedule them for production. As our designs and projects have advanced so has our need to improve the quality of our parts. Improving our manufacturing process has been in the works since I came on board. We are revamping the shop in a lot of ways, the most noticeable is the new 5 axis Hermle C400 with a HS Flex. The Hermle is a top-of-the-line precision-oriented machining center and delivers 5-axis simultaneous machining, allowing for complex geometries and reduced setup times. It’s super-fast, super accurate, and having the pallet pool gives us lights out capabilities we didn’t have before.”

Kaden Villarete uses the Haimer Power Clamp economic Plug NG shrink fit machine in combination with Haimer tool holders. The shrinker itself is super-fast and easy to use. Literally plug and play operation. When using Haimer tool holders it is as simple as matching corresponding numbers on the display to the corresponding holder for a step-by-step guide and a perfect fit every time. The Power Clamp Economic Plug NG features a patented pull-down coil system that provides even localized heating, even on thin-walled tool holders.  The Hermle is a rigid machine and Zone 5 needed tool holders that could handle the rigors of its 18,000rpm / 25HP spindle.

Kaden Villarete uses the Haimer Power Clamp economic Plug NG shrink fit machine in combination with Haimer tool holders. The shrinker itself is super-fast and easy to use. Literally plug and play operation. When using Haimer tool holders it is as simple as matching corresponding numbers on the display to the corresponding holder for a step-by-step guide and a perfect fit every time. The Power Clamp Economic Plug NG features a patented pull-down coil system that provides even localized heating, even on thin-walled tool holders. The Hermle is a rigid machine and Zone 5 needed tool holders that could handle the rigors of its 18,000rpm / 25HP spindle.

Gone are the days when a Zone 5 engineer designed a part, programmed it, then ran it themselves. Now, there are teams handing over their finished work to other departments to start the next step in the production line, and with that comes the need for detailed transference of information. “Our push towards a higher level of quality started with documentation,” tells Dakota. “There was a lot of tribal knowledge that needed to be put in writing. As a growing company we couldn’t keep hoping to remember all the specifics. We implemented software to better facilitate the transfer of information. Utilizing 1Factory quality management software paired with Dozuki connected work instruction software we are making detailed and easy to follow guides for each of our parts and processes. We are continuously working towards AS9100 and both platforms have clear and concise UIs and helped streamline our certification process. Better documentation has been one of the biggest changes over the last year and a half.” 

Zone 5’s manufacturing team found that some of their support equipment didn’t live up to the accuracy of the new Hermle C400 and they needed to source better options. In particular, their generic tool holders were lacking in the characteristics needed for accuracy and repeatability. “Jordan Tetzlaff of Haimer USA has a wealth of information,” tells Dakota’ “We were able to see an immediate reduction in set up time by switching to their Power Clamp economic Plug NG shrink fit machine as well as obtain a better quality of finished parts with their Haimer tool holders. The Hermle is a rigid machine, and we needed tool holders that could handle the rigors of its 18,000rpm / 25HP spindle. We’ve eliminated chatter on a couple of very thin and difficult winglets just by changing the tool holders.” The Haimer Power Clamp Economic Plug NG is a compact and cost-effective shrink fit solution. The shrinker itself is super-fast and easy to use. Literally plug and play operation. When using Haimer tool holders it is as simple as matching corresponding numbers on the display to the corresponding holder for a step-by-step guide that comes with a perfect fit every time. The Power Clamp Economic Plug NG features a patented pull-down coil system that provides even localized heating, even on thin-walled tool holders. The Plug NG is also compatible with a wide range of Haimer shrink fit tooling, making it a versatile addition to any machine shop. “Our next purchase in the coming weeks is a tool presetter from Haimer called the Tool Presetter UNO Automatic Drive,” adds Dakota. “We will pair it with a tool management software called Wintool. Wintool tracks selections of tool metrics as well as tools as they get taken in and out of the machine/ or track tool life for good back-end metrics. This software/ presetter takes out the potential of operator error and will help us get one step closer to scaling our manufacturing methods for our production ramp up in the near future. Hopefully even across multiple shops that we oversee.”

Left – Zone 5 is in the process of converting everything over to Lang. The conversion began with all new base plates for each of their pallets.Right - Their Hermle C400 has a 126-tool magazine. Each tool is held firmly in place by various Haimer tool holders.

Left – Zone 5 is in the process of converting everything over to Lang. The conversion began with all new base plates for each of their pallets.
Right – Their Hermle C400 has a 126-tool magazine. Each tool is held firmly in place by various Haimer tool holders.

Dialing in and fine tuning so many elements have freed Zone 5’s manufacturing and design team’s creativity. The recent addition of our Hermle C400 and Haimer’s tooling gets a lot of the credit for the ramp up in quality and production. “The Hermle brand is known throughout the world for their precision,” explains Dakota. “I met with Hermle USA and took a trip to Germany to their headquarters. The C400 is part of Hermle’s “Performance” line of machine tools and has more than lived up to our expectations. It’s a high-speed, high-precision 5-axis machining center in a small footprint. It has a powerful spindle, direct drive rotary table with a C-axis range of ±360° and a B-axis range of ±110°, and linear scales on all axes, stock. We added in a pallet pool that depending on our size can hold up to 18 different pallets depending on how you configure it. We expanded the tool magazine by an additional 88 tools getting us to 126 tools, and it comes with an on-machine probing suite.” “It is a great to be able to work remotely and trust that everything is going work as intended,” adds programmer Darin Williams. “Everything has just come together recently, by design. The Haimer tool holders are on point, the new Lang plates and vices are vast improvements, and we are overall programming better because of the new Hermle. It is hard to express in words, but our confidence is way up. We can attack parts at full speed and really utilize the C400’s capabilities. We run it flat out every chance we get because we know both the tool holders and machine can take it.” 

Darin Williams takes full advantage of the lights out capabilities of the Hermle. He loaded material on a Friday, finished the programming remotely, ran it through hyperMILL’s Virtual Machine, and pressed the green button from home. He came in Monday morning to finished parts. That wasn’t an option a year ago at Zone 5.

Left Darin Williams takes full advantage of the lights out capabilities of the Hermle. He loaded material on a Friday, finished the programming remotely, ran it through hyperMILL’s Virtual Machine, and pressed the green button from home. He came in Monday morning to finished parts. That wasn’t an option a year ago at Zone 5. Right – Zone 5’s first 5 axis was a Haas UMC 750 in 2018. They added a UMC 1000 not long after. They also have a VF7 that they use for bigger parts like wings and airframes.

All the parts for the 5 axis are programmed using hyperMILL and verified via hyperMILL’s Virtual Machine Center. Nothing hits the machines without verification. “We are one and done typically on parts,” tells Dakota. “Because the designs are always being improved it is rare that the exact same thing runs more than a few cycles. Everything is always evolving and the short amount of time it takes to verify a program is worth its weight in gold. The machines are expensive, and so is the spindle time. We can’t afford a crash for some dumb reason. So even the tiniest of changes means that we’re verify the entire program again. hyperMILL’s Virtual Machine gives us the confidence to run lights out. We’ve basically added an extra shift with the Hermle because of the pallet pool. We’ve got so much trust in our machines, systems, and processes that we can have an intern load the material and we are confident enough to press the green button remotely.”

Dakota, and everyone else for that matter at Zone 5 would love to make perfect jewelry surface finished parts, but the reality is most of what they build at Zone 5 is intended to have a limited lifespan. It’s fun and cool building and testing aerospace flight projects, but the reality is they are designing attritable aircraft that are efficient. There are some exceptions of course, but having your design crated up and dropped out of the back of a C-130 comes with some mixed emotions. That being said, many of their parts are nothing short of beautiful. One look at PALADIN and you see the pride that went into that design. John Wick would be impressed after seeing it in action. Zone 5 is fighting well above their weight class when it comes to government contracts and programs. Much of that comes down to management’s investment in highly skilled people and not shying away from the cost associated with sourcing the tools needed to bring their ideas to life.