CAD/CAM Helps Gunn and Moore hit Manufacturing for Six

I always know that Spring is almost here, it’s not just having sunlight in the morning to drive to work.

Spring is almost here when the Kingsgrove Sports Cricket catalogue arrives.

I like to have a quick glance through before a more detail read. Of course the first page that I always turn to is the one that features the Gunn and Moore Cricket Bats. You see I’m a “Gunn & Moore man”. That’s like saying you’re a “Ford or General Motors Man”, a “Mac or PC Man” a “SolidWorks or Autodesk Man”

You know what I’m talking about, it’s a personal thing!

I’ve always had Gunn and Moore Bats. I’ve always brought my son Gunn and Moore Bats (except for a strange aberration one year where he thought he should have a Kookaburra bat. The “Ponting Influence” that lasted one season and was traded in for a Gunn and Moore the following year!)

Flicked to the GM page & the first thing that caught my eyes were the words “most advanced deployment yet of orbi tal CAD/CAM technology”

Whilst th e words themselves are not unusual it’s the first time I’ve ever seen them associated with marketing of Cricket Bats.

Two of my interests are CAD & Cricket so I was interested to know more, so I went straight to the source & that source was David Bacon, Technical Manager – Gunn and Moore. Bat Designer & CAM Programmer.

I started by asking:

What CAD program are you using & when was it first introduced?

We use Autodesk Inventor, as this was the software that we were currently using to design our dart barrels (Unicorn), this was introduced into Gunn and Moore
in early 2008

Did the introduction of CAD influence the bat design or just the manufacture procedure?

The introduction of CAD was driven by the change of manufacturing procedure, this said – it has had a significant effect on the design procedure. Due to the ease of prototyping we were able to make new designs a reality in a fraction of the time and expertise (hand craftsmanship). Which allowed us to have a far greater number of prototype designs to choose our range from. The CAD design (in my opinion) has significantly improved the design of GM bats.

I assume the CNC & tooling was custom designed & manufactured for Gunn & Moore?

Yes, all custom designed. In fact the tooling was the vital link in making the CNC machine adapt to make cricket bats instead of the usual parts, as we were making complex shapes but we could not afford the time to machine everything out using a ball mill.