Case Study: Hewland Engineering halves gearbox fork cycle time and slashes tooling costs with Vero Software's Edgecam

Edgecam Halves Hewland Fork Cycle Time, and Slashes Tooling Costs

Hewland Engineering is a market-leading designer and manufacturer of gearbox and transmission systems for motorsport and electric-vehicle applications. Many of its parts are highly complex with tight tolerances (5–10 microns), and although Hewland used Edgecam CAM software, much of its capability was under‑utilised—programming relied on manual data entry, causing long cycle times, high tooling costs and risk of error.

Production Engineering Manager Dominic Prinsloo introduced feature-based programming and Edgecam’s Waveform roughing, automating toolpath regeneration from solid models and increasing feeds and stepover safely. The changes cut cycle times dramatically (for example, a selector fork from 1h5m to 38m and savings of ~30 minutes on larger forks), extended tool life from three parts to about 23 billets per carbide, and reduced stage times by 20 and 8.5 minutes. The result is considerable ongoing cost and tooling savings, higher shopfloor productivity and the ability to offer more competitive prices while supporting EV prototyping.

Hewland Engineering

Dominic Prinsloo

Production Engineering Manager