R&D

This Innovation Project, the Development of a Cloud Augmented Reality (AR) Technique and its applications for the Machine Tools sector in Castilla y León (ARCBECYL), directed at improving business competitiveness by providing support to the Innovative Business Clusters of Castilla y León, was implemented from 16 February to 15 October 2021.

Under the coordination of the Machine Tools Cluster of Castilla y León (CBCyL), and with the involvement of the Miranda de Ebro Technology Centre (CTME) and the company INGEMOV, NC Service Milling Machines, S.A. took part in this Project whose key objective was the design of a programmable environment to permit the development of web-based industrial Augmented Reality (AR) applications adapted to the needs of Machine Tool companies in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León.

Within the lines of action of the Project, NC Service played a very active part in the design and development of 6 augmented reality demonstrators:

• 3D Design
• Description of the dashboards.
• “In situ” Dashboard
• General overview of the process
• Geolocation
• Lidar sensor investigation

Thanks to the results of this ARCBECyL Project, the following services are available to innovative companies:

• Offer their customers greater added value for their products by making it possible for customers to interact with their products.
• Improve processes through the application of these augmented reality techniques.
• Marketing actions that enhance customer relations by showing a 3D model of their products.
• Geolocation services based on coordinates to display expanded information of the area.

The companies forming part of the CBECyL Cluster will be able to offer their customers all these services, allowing them to achieve a more competitive position in the market by offering values and brand positioning that are clearly differentiated from their competitors.

This project is being conducted within the framework of the call for grants for year 2021, directed at improving business competitiveness through support for Innovative Business Clusters (AAEEII) of the Regional Ministry of Finance and Tax of Castilla y León, co-founded with ERDF funds contributing to Objective OT3 “ACHIEVE A MORE COMPETITIVE BUSINESS FABRIC” of the ERDF operational program for Castilla y León.

For NC Service the DEMAT project (“Dematerialised Manufacturing Systems”) was its first venture into the 7th Framework Program for Research, funded by the European Commission.

For a company that constructs and employs machinery, it is essential to guarantee the high performance and productivity of its machines. However, as these machines are normally for extremely heavy material, with production processes requiring high energy consumption, the need arises to dematerialise the machine-tool.

Therefore, the DEMAT Project was launched with the primary objective of designing production systems that would guarantee the achievement of maximum added value for the machine-tool, whilst minimising the material resources used and always maintaining its properties of productivity, precision and reliability.

In this way, the DEMAT Project made it possible to develop a new form of designing, constructing, using and selling machine tools in Europe, maintaining the productivity and quality of the machines, yet minimising the consumption of material and energy resources through the integration and adjustment of the mechanics, the control and the dynamics of the machine in the machining process. All this was applied in the design of structures, also using new materials to achieve this objective and new structural concepts, which finally made it possible to reduce the consumption of raw material by up to 30%.

At NC Service, we have taken part, as end users, in the results of the Project, which were achieved through the design of a multidisciplinary machine model, combined with a process to reduce the amount of material used in the machine design.

The DEMAT project, headed by TECNALIA (ES) and with the participation of a further fifteen European entities (CECIMO (BE), Ibarmia (ES), Micromega (BE), CESI (IT), NC SERVICE (ES), Intelliact (CH), D.Electron (IT), Missler (FR), CNR-ITIA (IT), KULeuven (BE), EPFL (CH), Fraunhofer-ISI (DE), Bath (UK), ISW-Stuttgart (DE) and MCM (IT)), was declared one of the ten best European projects of the year in the production sector within the Industrial Technologies 2012 forum of reference for experts in nanotechnologies, advanced materials and new production systems, held in Aarhus, Denmark.

Project funded by the 7^th FrameWork Programme.

As part of the expanding process we embarked on at NC Service in order to reinforce our business structure in the city of Burgos, we carried out a project for the acquisition of a new industrial premises in order to increase our production and storage capacity.

This surrounding new factory implies an investment of two million euros and has a surface of 4,653 m². It is divided into two areas, one for the exhibition where milling machines after being refurbished could be inspected under power and under mechanizing conditions, and a second zone for storing the machinery once arriving to the company before retrofitting process starts.

This project is co-financed by the “Agencia de Innovación, Financiación e Internacionalización Empresarial de Castilla y León (ADE)” and by “The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)” in 50%, within the Operational Programme 2014-2020 of Castilla y León.