CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

30 September 2004

Company News

Gibbs and Fanuc Collaboration Leverages Controller Capabilities

Gibbs and Associates, developer of GibbsCAM®, computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software for programming computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools, and FANUC Ltd (Oshino-mura, Japan), announced that through a recent collaboration between the two companies GibbsCAM is able to leverage FANUC controller capabilities producing more efficient CNC programs. This latest news builds on the long relationship between Gibbs and GE Fanuc Automation Corporation (Charlottesville, VA), which in the past has produced advances such as a version of Gibbs SFP® which runs adaptively on GE Fanuc open architecture controllers

"The conventional approach for improving CNC programs, especially for high speed machining," states Bill Gibbs, founder and president of Gibbs and Associates, "is what I call disjointed; done without a real consideration for machine tool/controller capabilities. Generic HSM solutions, such as step-over loop backs and radiused corners, allow generic CNC programs to run faster on generic machine tools. Because of our working relationship with FANUC, we were able to work with their technical staff to identify a number of methods to improve machine tool performance by accessing capabilities in their controller, such as 5-axis enhancements. The first results of this collaborative effort are very promising and support even further collaboration in the future."

"The earlier implementation of Gibbs SFP with FANUC controllers," comments Tomoaki "Tomo" Ishibe, GE Fanuc Automation Americas' Director CNC Technology and Growth Opportunities, "gave us some early insights into the type of performance gains we could realize by more closely integrating the controller's capabilities with the SFP software. With the advances in controller capabilities that have been recently developed, it was apparent that we could deliver more performance to our customers by having the Gibbs software utilize them. Through this new collaboration, we should be able to continue providing the latest technology to the market in a timely manner maximizing customer's productivity."

The two companies will be presenting their recent accomplishments at the IMTS 2004 trade show, held at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois on September 8th - 15th.

FANUC LTD, Oshino Japan, delivers automation hardware and software designed to help users reduce costs, increase efficiency and enhance profitability by CNC (computer numeric control), lasers and robots. Fanuc partners with GE in a joint venture, GE Fanuc Automation, in American and European markets. For more information, visit http://www.fanuc.com

 

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