MechChem Africa June 2018

⎪ Products and industry news ⎪

Nadjar expands beyond grinding After seeing a decline in the precision grinding market in recent years, Nadjar company director Renaud Nadjar has expanded his Villeurbanne, France-based shop to take on a variety of other machining processes.

The success of this initial experience led Nadjar to quickly buy an NC lathe with another ESPRIT licence and then another milling machine. Now the team has a 2-axis turning licence and a 2.5-axis milling licence. An upcoming ESPRIT pro- gramming course will allow operators to learn about even more possibilities. “I’m always curious. I love learning, and each time a programming session is finished, I check to see if it’s possible to find away to machine more rapidly,” Nadjar says. The demand for 3D machining led the company to purchase the ESPRIT 3Dmill- ing module. It was a new challenge, but several months on, Nadjar is delighted with the investment. “The 3D module in ESPRIT is great because the software calculates everything, it prompts with coherent values, for example, which saves an incredible amount of time,”Nadjar says. For example, to program a resin panel in3D, theprogrammer chooses a standard tool (a ball-nose cutter), sets a fewparam- eters and the software quickly takes care of the rest. Nadjar really appreciates the soft- ware’s simulation capabilities – the state of the surface on the screen during simu- lation is just like that of the real part. This allows programming to be adjusted to obtain a perfect finish. “For me, ESPRIT is the solution we need to make complex parts with incredible ease,” he said. Nadjar has already exceeded its rev- enue forecast. It plans to invest in 5-axis milling and3- and5-axis turning next. “We are limited by our machines, but there’s no limit with ESPRIT CAM,” Nadjar says. Nadjar-designed Haas CNC milling and turning machines with ESPRIT CAM software and services are available in South Africa through Rothco in Spartan, Kempton Park. www.rothco.co.za

Renaud Nadjar with his father, accompanied by Francisco Pardo (Usiprog), Emilie Dubreuil (ESPRIT) and Stéphane Crochon (Usiprog).

B ased in Villeurbanne, France, Nadjar specialises in precision grinding. In recent years, tech- nological advances in milling and turning have eaten into the grinding market and economic crises have resulted in highly irregular workloads. In order to safeguard the future of the family-owned company, founded by his father 50 years ago, director Renaud Nadjar has expanded the firm’s capabil- ity to combine milling and turning with grinding, providing customerswith amore complete service. The companynowhandles orders from theautomotive, rail, chemical andmachine tool sectors for small- and medium-sized parts. Grinding is performed after heat treatment for parts that need to have ac- curacies within a fewmicrons. Nadjar’s first investment was in mill- ing. Unimpressed by the programming software embedded in numeric control systems, RenaudNadjar decided to equip the company with standalone program- ming software. He wanted to program more complex parts and write programs in the backgroundwhile themachinewas operating. He knew by talking to other subcontractors that therewere problems with some of the solutions available on the market and to help avoid these, he decided to partner with CAM software developers. The partnership between machine manufacturerHaas andESPRITCAMsoft- waremadeitpossibletopurchasebothina

package deal. “Thanks to this partnership, we were able to start with certified post processors and error-free CAM,” Nadjar explains, havingmadean initial investment in three Haas machines with correspond- ing ESPRIT licences. Learning a newmachining procedure, a new machine and new software all at the same time was a major challenge, but the technical support available for ESPRIT software was the key to success. After receiving training and technical support from ESPRIT reseller Usiprog, Nadjardevelopedtheinternalcapabilityto write a program for nearly any part. “The people from ESPRIT were friendly and ef- ficient from the outset,” he says.

The partnership between machine manufacturer Haas and ESPRIT CAM software made it possible for Nadjar to combine milling and turning with grinding.

32 ¦ MechChem Africa • June 2018