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| New company makes a big first impression |
| Mc Drill Technology, which designs and builds drilling rigs, is a new company (established 2006) with a lot of experience. Its three founders have worked in the drilling industry for decades. "After contributing to the growth of other companies, we decided the timing was right to start our own," says Luca Baraghini, president of Mc Drill. "It's a good time to be in this business right now," he adds. "The market is booming and will be for next five to six years." |
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| Mc Drill's goal is not just to survive as a newcomer in a competitive industry. It is "to become a reference point for the world market." The founders' plan for achieving this is to offer high-quality, safe equipment that is competitively priced. Since its inception, the company has been working to quickly develop its product line, which includes three types of drilling rigs: multipurpose drills, vertical drills and tunnel drills. Its first model was on the market within six months of the company's start, and by the first year and a half of operation, Mc Drill had introduced seven drilling rigs to the market. |
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| So while pressure has been on to develop products quickly and hold down costs, the issue of safety is never overlooked because the size of this equipment makes it potentially dangerous to operate. "We can't lose the market because we had a safety problem with a machine," says Baraghini. |
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| Optimizing material usage |
| Mc Drill engineers rely on Femap® with NX® Nastran finite element analysis (FEA) software to design rigs that meet the company's need for fast development, safety and competitive pricing.Mc Drill Structural Design Manager, Gianluca Camparini, appreciates this FEA solution for a number of reasons, a main one being the control it gives him over the analysis process. "With Femap, I can make choices that other software forces upon the user," Camparini explains. "I can analyze what I need and not what the software wants, and I can control the execution of the analysis step-bystep." He also appreciates Femap's ease of use, which was perhaps somewhat unexpected given the high level of its functionality. "While Femap is very intuitive to use, it has proved to be a most comprehensive solution," he adds. |
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| FEA supports Mc Drill's design goals by allowing engineers to optimize the amount of material in the rigs.Traditionally, this equipment has been overdesigned because of its inherent dangers and the need to ensure the safety of operators and bystanders. Using Femap with NX Nastran, Mc Drill can do things differently. Engineers import their CAD models into Femap where they prepare finite element models.After running the analysis in NX Nastran, they use Femap's post-processing tools to find areas where excess material can be safely removed. |
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| "Optimizing material usage is how we achieve low costs and high performance," notes Baraghini. "Although it is possible to do this with hand calculations, Femap with NX Nastran speeds up design optimization so that we can do it routinely, as a competitive advantage." |
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| Excellent ROI for FEA |
| As an example of the cost-saving potential of material optimization, Baraghini offers the recently introduced Mc 160 B multipurpose drill.On this drill, the articulation between the mast and the rest of the machine is particularly complex because it is subject to a variety of different forces while the rig is in operation. "On a previous project, the solution was to increase material there," Baraghini explains. "Using FEA, we were able to actually reduce material in that region for a saving 1,000 Euros per machine. That's just from that one analysis." That particular analysis, according to Camparini, took approximately 10 hours – an excellent return on the design effort. |
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| Reducing material lowers the cost of equipment and also the cost to transport it to the customer. Ultimately, these savings help ensure the profitability of this start-up company. But removing material is also important to Mc Drill because it increases both the quality and the safety of the drills. "When we use less material, the arm can move faster and that increases the performance of the machine itself," explains Camparini. "Also, lower weight makes the drill more stable, which makes it safer." |
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| For Mc Drill, Femap with NX Nastran is a strategic weapon in its battle for market share. "This level of design optimization would be impossible or would require too many people to do manually," concludes Baraghini. "We are grateful to have this software." |
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