CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
October 2008
Product News
Mastercam Mill X3 Makes Current Processes More Efficient and Automated
Mastercam X3 Mill offers expanded machining flexibility and an increased emphasis on speed and automation. Feature Based Machining, new high speed tool motion, and faster toolpath generation combine with dozens of additional new enhancements in a package intended to improve shop floor productivity.
Here are some of the most significant highlights and new functionality in Mastercam X3 Mill:
Feature Based Machining (FBM) – Almost every shop deals with solid models, and Mastercam delivers a powerful way to automatically mill and drill these parts. FBM evaluates a part’s features and automatically designs an effective machining strategy. FBM can detect solid machining features for pocketing, contouring, and drilling routines. FBM will machine pockets using new 2D HST roughing, rest mill, and finish operations; automatically create drilled, tapped, counterbore, and countersink holes; automatically perform spot drilling and pre-drilling based on user controlled settings; and much more. And all toolpaths are fully associative and editable after creation.
2D High Speed Toolpaths – The success of Mastercam’s 3D high speed toolpaths leads to new high speed machining expressly for 2D machining. Although optimized for high speed cutting and hard milling, these new 2D toolpaths offer many additional benefits including superior finish and longer tool life. These new toolpaths can make your processes more efficient and automated, while minimizing programming and cycle times.
Enhanced Multiaxis Functions – Mastercam X3 improves multiaxis toolpath speed and introduces new High Speed Toolpath controls that make programming more efficient. Both the Port5ax and Flow5ax toolpaths include a new feature that allows an overlap/blend to be added at the beginning and end of a toolpath.
Mastercam in SolidWorks – This new X3 package brings the most popular Mastercam toolpaths directly into SolidWorks. Designers who work with the world’s leading CAD system can now program those parts with the world’s leading CAM toolpaths in the same interface. Mastercam in SolidWorks includes a suite of cutting strategies, including Feature Based Machining, high speed machining, and a set of automated cleanup toolpaths. This package will be released shortly after Mastercam X3.
Other new enhancements include:
- Import full SolidWorks history trees
- Expanded support for cutting STL files
- CAD enhancements
- 3D high speed toolpath enhancements
- …and many more
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