At this year’s Hermle Open House, Delcam will be demonstrating a range of its CAD/CAM software, including Powermill, FeatureCAM and Powerinspect.
One demonstration will show the machining of an aluminium die-casting mould for a pump housing on a Hermle C32U, programmed with Delcam’s Powermill CAM system for five-axis and high-speed machining.
Visitors will also be able to see demonstrations of the latest release of Powermill, which features additions for five-axis machining.
Delcam will also demonstrate the 2014 R2 version of its FeatureCAM feature-based CAM which provides support for milling and drilling with right-angle heads.
A further demonstration will show on-machine verification (OMV) using the Powerinspect inspection software.
This year’s event will be held at Hermle’s headquarters from 9–12 April.
Key product features and benefits
Powermill
- Has a dialogue to track the position of the machine tool
- Features toolbar to simulate and adjust the configuration and tool axis of a 3+2 machine
- The dialogue has a redesigned user interface, giving improved presentation of data on the position of the machine tool, together with the limits set for each axis
- Includes a slider to jog the machine components into position during the simulation and displays a warning if any axis limit is exceeded
- The toolbar can be used to edit the tool axis and the orientation of the machine tool. This allows quick and easy updates to existing toolpaths with the new parameters
- A workplane that is aligned to the new axis and orientation can be created for subsequent programming operations
- Plug-in for Powermill provides a graph of the linear and rotary axes of the machine during the simulation. Analysis of this graph allows users to locate any potential problems, such as sudden changes in direction or axis reversals that can adversely affect the surface finish
FeatureCAM
- Provides support for milling and drilling with right-angle heads and one-stop programming of multiple roughing operations
- Other enhancements in this release include better control of Z-level roughing, and improvements to wire EDM and chamfering
- Since its launch in 1995, an increased range of strategies has been added to provide more efficient toolpaths, giving greater productivity on a wider range of machines
Powerinspect
- Allows the checking of machined parts to be carried out in situ on any CNC machine tool rather than having to transfer them to co-ordinate 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
Source: theengineer.co.uk
