Lead Time and Cost Reduction: A CNC Programming System for Motor Vehicle Prototypes

Switching to the MasterCam CNC programming system has allowed Ford Motor Company research staff to produce a wide variety of prototype parts with complex contours on CNC machine tools rather than building patterns by hand and casting the parts. The advantages have been impressive. (1) The need to build patterns by hand has been eliminated,thus reducing the cost of the average prototype part by 75 per cent. (2)Lead time has been reduced from an average of three weeks for pattern making, mould making and casting to a typical 48 hours for programming and CNC machining; and (3) prototype quality has been greatly improved because the machined parts possess mathematically sound contours rather than hand filed approximations.