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NOTABLE "On the racetrack we have experienced one of the most successful years in our company's history. For 2016, we are placing emphasis on consistency and will again shift up a gear. We will be the only manufacturer to tackle three of the four classes at Le Mans," Dr. Oliver Blume, Porsche CEO said of the company's motorsports activities. So one of the ways that Porsche Motorsports will be felding a number of cars this year for the IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Championship, the World Endurance Cup races (including, of course, Le Mans) and other series is by establishing an in-house manufacturing capability for the production of components. Explained Frank Jahn, who is responsible for component production for the Porsche racing team, "Short response times and fexibility are deciding factors for success in the feld of motor sports." Porsche personnel worked with one of its sponsors and technology partners to develop the production capability, DMG MORI ( us.dmgmori. com ). There are two machines and a powerful suite of software at the core of this. There is the CTX beta 800, a universal turning center, and a DMU 65 monoBLOCK, a fve-axis vertical machin- ing center with a rotary table. Of the equipment, Jahn said, "The combina- tion of the versatile CTX beta 800 – it is equipped with a Y-axis and an oil mist circuit breaker – and the fve-axis DMU 65 monoBLOCK allows us complete freedom with regard to production." Machining capability is one part of the equa- tion. The design of and programming for parts is another. So at Porsche they're developing and programming with Siemens NX CAD/CAM, followed by a 1:1 simulation of the NC program in the DMG MORI Virtual Machine. "The Siemens NX CAM provides the required programming strategy for even the most complex machining operation. And we check feasibility and ensure 100% collision safety with the virtual machine," said Jahn, explaining the investment in the software solution. He sees an analogy to the 24 hour race of Le Mans, where Porsche could recently celebrate an impressive double victory: "We often need to deliver top results in the form of high-quality components within 24 hours as well." Which is why the complex components must be machined error-free at the frst attempt. Dittmar Lienert, who joined the team when component production was established and is responsible for programming and machining of the components, explained the advantage of the simulation software: "The DMG MORI Virtual Machine holds the same importance for us as the racing simulator for the pilots [drivers]. It enables the 1:1 simulation of real machining on the PC, including machine kinematics and Porsche Motorsports & Quick Product Creation Dittmar Lienert (left), responsible for program- ming and operation, and Frank Jahn (right), responsible for component production, at Porsche Motorsports. The 2015 Porsche 919 that won at Le Mans last June, 45 years after Porsche's frst victory at La Sarthe. The Porsche 919 Hybrid was developed to campaign in the LMP1 class. It uses a four-cylinder turbocharged engine that drives the rear wheels that is supplemented by an electric motor that drives the front with energy stored in a lithium-ion battery, with the energy recovered from both the exhaust gas stream and braking. 10 GEAR