How we work
The problem comes before the technology.
We start with a concrete question from the shop floor, such as what decides whether a tolerance can be held, or what a drawing leaves unspecified. Only once that question is well defined do we choose a technology and an approach. Milling, turning and EDM are different physical problems, which is why our research works from a separate model for each process.
What we research has to hold up in practice. For our benchmark we make the test parts ourselves, and the level of difficulty is fixed before a test runs. We only publish a result that is repeatable and traceable to its source, and we always give its range. What we build in Blake, we test against real drawings and models, together with the people who do the work.
A question like that almost always spans several disciplines at once: geometry, data, software and machining itself. The team’s backgrounds include applied physics, econometrics, computer engineering and IT, and we work on each question together from the start. Whoever picks something up sees it through, and says so right away when something does not work yet.
In the long term, we want to capture the knowledge behind precision work and make it usable for manufacturers across Europe. We work towards that in steps you can check. When Blake cannot do something yet, we say so.