CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
8 June 2007
Implementatioin Investments
Delcam's FeatureCAM Makes Customisation Easy for Medical Equipment Manufacturer
Delcam's FeatureCAM is helping medical equipment manufacturer Cytopeia to deliver customised versions of cell sorters to life science researchers so they can examine cells and determine what they contain. The company, which is based in Seattle, USA, launched the first commercial, compact, fully-automated cell sorter in 2004.
Cytopeia now builds custom applications of its equipment for its various customers. The principle of each machine is the same but it may require different size components or a modified design. More than 350 parts go into the instruments, and each can be changed or customised to meet the needs of an application.
"Our real strength is that we have a manufacturing capability that can make the changes in the instrument that researchers may require," pointed out Ger van den Engh, Cytopeia founder and President. "We can easily adapt to individual needs and produce one-off custom designs."
"Delcam provides us with effective ways of importing our design data into FeatureCAM," said Brian Wadey, Director of Manufacturing at Cytopeia. "In addition, the software provides the associativity to determine what feature or dimension has changed in the parts from one version of the machine to another."
"We work as a vendor to the assembly area, so we have to be able to keep the customer supplied," Mr. Wadey said. "Sometimes that means a rapid turnaround on a new part design. That is where FeatureCAM really helps us." Previously, the parts were made outside Cytopeia. This sometimes took months and they were not always made correctly the first time.
"We are big on R&D here, so the in-house programming and manufacturing lets us try new ideas quickly," Mr. Wadey said. "We can update a program, change it, and make a part without editing a program the traditional way, which would involve re-programming the whole part," added Manufacturing Supervisor, Steve Ouimet.
Confidence in the software is strong. "We never dry-run a part," Mr Wadey claimed. "You become so involved with the software that you know it will run correctly. There has never been a software-related crash. This is a big help if we need to ask an outside vendor to produce parts for us. We provide the part program and they run it."
Another big help to Cytopeia is the technical support they get from Kyle Kershaw, Ben Gowers and all the programmers in Salt Lake City. "Support is key to using any software and they do it very well. Not only do they help you with your current issue, but they educate you and make you stronger. Plus Delcam's development team is willing to work with us to adapt the software to our requirements," Mr. Wadey said.
"It's a package we easily justified on its usability and upgradeability. It is easy to learn and totally reliable," added Mr. Wadey, "We've compared it to other software on the market and we see that FeatureCAM is doing a lot of things right."
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