CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
10 May 2013
Events News
Delcam’s Latest Technology to be shown by SEACAM at Feira Feimafe 2013
The latest CADCAM technology from Delcam will be demonstrated on stand B49 at the Feira Feimafe by SEACAM, Delcam’s longstanding reseller in Brazil. New releases to be shown will include the latest versions of PowerMILL, PartMaker for the programming of Swiss-type lathes, especially for the manufacture of medical and dental implants, and FeatureCAM.
Also on display with be the PowerINSPECT inspection software and Delcam’s specialist software for the healthcare and footwear industries.
The Vortex strategy for high-speed area clearance will be the major enhancement for the next release of PowerMILL. The new strategy will also be added to FeatureCAM and PartMaker later this year. Vortex, for which Delcam has a patent pending, has been developed by the company specifically to gain the maximum benefit from solid carbide tooling, in particular those designs that can give deeper cuts by using the full flute length as the cutting surface. It can be used for two- and three-axis roughing, positional five-axis area clearance and for rest machining based on stock models or reference toolpaths.
Like other Delcam roughing strategies, Vortex toolpaths are calculated to give more efficient machining by following the shape of the part and by keeping air moves to a minimum. This is particularly important for rest machining operations.
The new release of FeatureCAM includes new strategies for both roughing and finish machining, together with developments that will shorten the calculation times. FeatureCAM programs will also be shown on the stands of several of SEACam’s machine-tool partners, including Mitsui, Citizen, Ergomat and Vitor Ciola.
Another product to be shown will be the new release of PowerINSPECT OMV (On-Machine Verification). OMV with PowerINSPECT allows initial checking of machined parts to be carried out in situ on any CNC machine tool rather than having to transfer them to coordinate measuring machines for inspection. The main advantage is that any mistakes are discovered where they can be corrected – on the machine tool. Repeated cycles of machining and inspection, interspersed with long set-up times on the respective pieces of equipment, are avoided, meaning that overall manufacturing times can be reduced.
The most obvious benefit of OMV is for those companies that do not have existing inspection capabilities. Modern machine tools, such as those supplied by Mazak, either come with, or can be retrofitted with, probing systems from Renishaw to assist in the set-up of the job. With PowerINSPECT, this same equipment can be used for verification at little extra cost.
OMV can give huge time savings by enabling the quality of the component being machined to be monitored at all stages in the manufacturing process. This allows any errors to be detected earlier, and so corrected more quickly and at lower cost. For example, it is possible to check that the correct amount of stock has been left on the component after a roughing operation, rather than having to wait until all machining operations have been completed before discovering that an error has been made.
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