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S y s t e mESPRIT® helps BRAKO create
2,000 programs in one year —with only two programmers
ESPRIT ® is proving its worth for Macedonian
manufacturer BRAKO, allowing the company’s twoprogrammers to punch well above their weight.
Founded in 1947 in Veles,
Macedonia, BRAKO produces
parts and components used in
medical devices, road sweeper
trucks, airport ground equipment,
forklift accessories, metal welded
constructions, small hydro plants,
telecommunications shelters andantenna towers. The company
also makes various wire products
including nails, mesh and welding
wire. Its components range from
simple shafts and bushes to hydroturbine house and covers; however,most of its work requires 3-axis
milling. The company primarily

BRAKO machines the guide vane on a Takuma
CNC milling machine, using a 5-axis strategy.

uses mild steel but also somestainless steel and aluminum.
Due to the small size of the
Macedonian market — the country
has just over two million inhabitants— the overwhelming majority(96%) of BRAKO’s products areexported. Its customers include
healthcare companies Handicare
Group (Sweden) and Invacare(UK), Dutch airport equipment
manufacturer S-P-S, street
sweeper manufacturers Green
Machines (Austria) and Biostrada(Italy), Austrian turbine producer
Global Hydro Energy, andMacedonia’s electric company,
EVN. The annual revenue for the550-employee company wasaround €28 million in 2016.
BRAKO runs three CNC millingmachines — two Takumi 3-axis
and a Haas 3+1 axis — and three
CNC turning machines — a RAIS
T250 and two Goodways. Thecompany also owns a boringmaching with a working area of6 x 4 x 1.5 meters (19.7 x 13.1x 4.9 feet) and a rotating B-axis

table that can also make linear
movements in the direction of theZ-axis. Rounding out BRAKO’s
inventory is an assortment oflaser cutting, tube bending,plate rolling, plasma cutting andcoordinated measuring machines
and a robot welding station.
BRAKO began using ESPRIT after
speaking with representatives at
Mazak who referred the company
to a local CAM dealer, Rapid
Progress. “The initial ESPRIT
presentations gave us a goodfeeling,” says Aleksandar Naumov,
BRAKO project manager andmechanical engineer. “After taking atraining session and getting to know
the interface, and after creating
our first G-code and machining ourfirst parts, we decided that ESPRIT
was the best choice for us. We
mainly chose ESPRIT because thesoftware was simple to master,1

“Using the wide rangeof standard machining
operations contained inESPRIT helps us to tackle
complex and unusualparts with ease.”-- Aleksandar Naumov,
project manager and mechanical engineer, BRAKO

and we were able to familiarize
ourselves with it quickly, but it
was also our top pick becauseof the excellent help and training
provided. The support we receivefrom Rapid Progress is perfect, andI felt like the trainer directly injected
all the knowledge into my brain.”
Prior to ESPRIT, BRAKO
used another CAM systemand sometimes the manualprogramming function on themachine to program simple milledparts. “Now we can’t imagine how
we’d handle all the machines wehave without ESPRIT,” Naumov
says. “The most important benefit
for us has been decreased
programming time and increased
productivity: as we’ve begun
using ESPRIT to its fullest, weare over 30% more productive
in programming — after just oneyear.” BRAKO managed to create
more than 2,000 programs in its
first year, an astonishing number
considering the company has
only two programmers under its
employ. “It’s proof that ESPRIT isvery user friendly, especially forsimilar parts that are repeatedfrequently,” Naumov continues.

guide vanes for a Francis turbine,which are made in two operations— milling, then turning — that areprogrammed by ESPRIT. The partis complex enough that preparing
for production took more thanfour days. But programming withESPRIT took less than a day.
“Using the wide range of standard
machining operations containedin ESPRIT helps us to tackle
complex and unusual parts withease,” says Naumov. “We caneasily switch production from onepart to another, and we can moveproduction of some parts fromone machine to another — it only
takes a few clicks to generate

G-code for another machine.
“The ability to define and savetools in the database, group
operations together, and editmachining processes makes usvery flexible in programming, as
well as in production. In short,
this is the power of ESPRIT.”
As for its future plans, BRAKO
intends to purchase a bigger
5-axis milling machine to machinerunner wheels for Pelton turbines
to be used in small hydroplants. “It will be a challenge,
but we’re in this together withESPRIT,” Naumov says.

BRAKO’s two engineers — project manager Aleksandar Naumov and mechanical engineer Slavcho
Mitrovski — are able to program approximately 2,000 different parts per year using ESPRIT.

BRAKO recently worked on some

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Email: esprit@dptechnology.com

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