CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
30 April 2009
Product News
Delcam to show new products at the Northwest Machine Tool Expo and Control Stuttgart
Delcam will demonstrate its most recent CADCAM solutions at the Northwest Machine Tool Expo to be held from May 5th to 7th at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. The Expo runs concurrently with a free three-day conference. On May 7, Ben Gowers, Delcam training specialist, will give a presentation showing how technologies in today’s CADCAM software can help increase productivity and reduce lead times.
With increasing global competition, manufacturing companies are under pressure to reduce costs. Delcam’s range of complete automated CADCAM solutions can help companies from the creation of a concept design through to the manufacture and inspection of prototypes tooling and sample components. The new release of FeatureCAM 2009 features increased support for mill-turn equipment, and five-axis and four-axis simultaneous milling.
Delcam will preview the forthcoming version of its PowerINSPECT inspection software at the Control exhibition to be held in Stuttgart from 5th to 8th May. This new release is scheduled for release in the summer and will include a range of enhancements to make it easier and more flexible to use.
There will be a completely new interface for undertaking “simple” measurements. This will make it easier to undertake basic tasks, such as measuring the distance between two points or two planes, or the centres of two circles, or checking the thickness of a section.
It has also been made easier to add or delete points during an inspection from a set of measurements defining any feature. Points might need to be added to collect extra data from a suspect area, while “rogue” measurements can be deleted to prevent them affecting the overall inspection.
A number of improvements have been made to the ways in which data within geometric features can be handled. The attributes of each point making up the sequence will be able to be displayed separately, either as the renowned PowerINSPECT dots or as needles proportionate in length to the extent of the deviation. This will make it easier to see where the problems areas are, especially in bigger parts with large numbers of measurements.
It will also be possible to use individual points within multiple features. For example, two sets of points could be used to check the circles at the top and bottom of a cylinder and then combined to produce the inspection report for the cylinder itself. Increased flexibility will also come from the new ability to display feature measurements as surface points for comparison with the CAD model. This will make it easier to spot errors when, for example, a circle is perfect in its own dimensions but is not in exactly the correct position on the part.
One simple enhancement that could save considerable time will be the ability to halt an inspection during the measurement sequence. This will allow the operator to produce a report as soon as the part is found to be out of tolerance rather than having to complete the full sequence. It will be particularly helpful when inspecting more complex components in a production environment.
PowerINSPECT’s easy-to-understand reporting has always been one of its most popular attributes. This has been further improved with the ability to display an image of the part on each page of the report showing just the measurements listed on that page. This will make it easier to analyse the results from large sets of data, for example, results collected with laser scanners.Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.
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