Services

Traditional Patternmaking Services

Our wood tooling production is comprehensive. Using the most modern of wood working machines our highly skilled and experienced personnel produce a wide variety of items. These range from large patterns for castings over one hundred tons to intricate tooling for parts of one pound or less. We have people with many years of experience in automotive, marine, agricultural, aviation, mining, pipeline, structural and other fields of engineering.

As well as foundry patterns, we manufacture specialty items such as engineering models for fit, function or display and prototypes for any sector.
Our plastic tooling production is the largest single part of our shipments. We use polyurethanes, epoxies, silicone rubber and other plastics for tooling, depending on the end use. Multiple impression polyurethane patterns are our stock in trade, rigged and framed ready for full production.

Our Metal department manufactures lost-wax dies, centrifugal molds, aluminum match plates, permanent molds, vacuum tools, rotational molds and large high volume production tools, such as the Laempe 40 multiple part coreboxes. Automotive jigs and fixtures are made on a regular basis. This department is staffed by highly skilled mold makers and machinists. They are well versed in all aspects of foundry tooling and general engineering.

CAD/CAM

All Computer Assisted Design and Manufacturing procedures are accomplished with the aid of NX6. This software has very powerful hybrid modeling capabilities, which seamlessly integrates constraint-based feature modeling and explicit geometric modeling. Our Design team can create three dimensional models from engineer’s drawings, or we can manipulate models provided by the customer to create a functional tool. We have a full host of translation options so we can easily import and work with 2D and 3D models from a variety of formats, these include NX part files (PRT), parasolid (X_T), STL, IGES, STEP, and DXE/DWG files.

Aluminum Matchplate

NX6 is considered second to none for the creation of manufacturing operations and has all the power to generate tool paths for even the most complex geometry with little effort. The CAM application, lets us link all machining modules together and allows users to graphically create and edit tool paths by observing the tool as it moves. Our team is highly skilled at producing efficient tool paths to leave a smooth and accurate finish on any type of job. Intelligent tool path manipulation is integral to the quality of our finished products.

Working in conjunction with the Modeling application, design changes can be applied to the model which are parametrically linked to CAM applications, which saves valuable time for edits made to the cutter paths.

Port Hope Patterns has 2 CNC milling machines to meet our customer’s needs.

Co-ordinate Measuring Department

Co-ordinate measuring machines are one of the many diverse dimensional tools used at Port Hope Patterns Limited to ensure quality throughout the manufacturing process. We continually strive to meet our customers expectations for accuracy through the design development stages to the finished product.

Our inspection team can offer you data in a very concise and manageable format, allowing you to concentrate on other aspects of your business. We can reverse engineer any kind of part. A dimensionally accurate drawing and/or a duplicate model can be created from your product. Depending on the manufacturing process and material, new tooling can be created to mass produce that product.

The sensible approach of Port Hope Patterns Limited to all inspection tasks should make us an easy choice for all your CMM requirements, large or small.

NC Verification

Numerical control verification is the process of checking the machine code generated by NX6 for undesired output. Backed up with a powerful software package called VERICUT©, we have ultimate flexibility. The program detects movements that could ruin the part, damage the fixture, break the cutting tool, or crash the machine. VERICUT© enables our NC programmers to be certain the finished part will match the original design intent, without doing a single prove-out! This is achieved through a graphical simulation of the CNC machines movement and an analysis of cutter feed and speed while engaging the rough material.

NC-path running in system and on the Machining center

A final visual inspection of the G-code is always performed as an extra precaution to ensure that the proper speeds and feeds are being used for each tool. Problems are quickly resolved in the initial CAM development to decrease time-to-market.

Corebox Component in composite pattern plank