Delcam’s sponsorship of the Bloodhound SSC (SuperSonic Car) adventure will be launched formally at the Autosport International exhibition to be held at the NEC from 9th to 13th January. Bloodhound SSC aims to set a new world land speed record of 1,000 mph in South Africa in 2016.
Delcam staff will be on the Bloodhound SSC stand (2770) at the event to discuss the company’s involvement in the project. This will include technical support with its manufacturing software and expertise, and the production of some components for the record-breaking vehicle in its Advanced Manufacturing Facility. Several Delcam customers and technical partners are already using the company’s CADCAM software to manufacture parts for the ultimate jet- and rocket-powered racing car.
The Delcam staff will also present the latest developments for the motorsport industry in the company’s design, machining and inspection software. Delcam software is used at all levels of the industry, from the leading teams to specialist sub-contractors, in all cases helping manufacturers of metal and composite parts to maximise productivity, improve quality and reduce lead times.
Delcam’s PowerSHAPE CAD software offers a unique combination of robust solid modelling, flexible surface modelling, and quick and easy direct modelling, plus triangle modelling for editing STL files and other triangle formats. Overall, it provides the most comprehensive range of modelling techniques available in a single CAD program. Having all the different technologies in the same package reduces the need to transfer data between multiple programs and so streamlines the whole product development process.
This broad range of functionality makes PowerSHAPE ideal for the re-engineering of existing products into improved designs or for creating customised items, such as equipment for a specific driver. The most recent addition to PowerSHAPE is a set of direct modelling tools that will speed up and simplify concept development, and enable tooling designers to tackle all the common problems that they find in product designs, such as insufficient draft or inappropriate fillet sizes.
Delcam’s award-winning PowerMILL CAM software is the market leader for high-speed and five-axis machining across a wide range of industries, including motorsport. The most important new option in the 2014 release of PowerMILL is the new Vortex strategy for high-speed area clearance. Vortex, for which Delcam has a patent pending, has been developed by the company specifically to gain the fastest safe material removal with solid carbide tooling, in particular those designs that can give deeper cuts by using the full flute length as the cutting surface.
The Vortex strategy produces toolpaths with a controlled engagement angle for the complete operation. This maintains the optimum cutting conditions for the entire toolpath that would normally be possible only for the straight-line moves. As a result, the cutting time will be significantly shorter, while cutting will be undertaken at a more consistent volume-removal rate and feed rate, so protecting the machine.
Delcam’s PowerINSPECT is one of the world’s leading hardware-independent inspection software. It has gained this position because of its unrivalled ability to check prototypes, tooling and production parts against CAD data and generate reports that can be understood by all engineers, not just specialist metrologists. Recent enhancements include an improved method for the automated inspection of edges of parts, a new mirror command to save programming time for symmetrical components, support for a wider range of geometric features, and a new best-fit option when measuring castings and forgings.
In addition, PowerINSPECT now offers unique dual-device inspection options that allow measurement with two portable devices at the same time, as well as being able to create efficient inspection sequences for use on dual-column CNC coordinate-measuring machines.
