In 2018, CNC Software Inc., Tolland, Conn., reached several milestones: its 35th anniversary as a company, 250,000th installation, a new user website and the introduction of Mastercam 2019.
Swiss-style machine tools can be a good choice for making complex parts. On the downside, however, Swiss machining itself has a reputation of being complex—and, therefore, more difficult to master than standard machining.
Do you have what it takes to raise your milling productivity to the next level? In addition to the requisite know-how, you need cutters and machine tools that will allow you to employ milling techniques that exceed what’s normally possible. Aided by the right hardware, you may soon be performing feats like pushing your feed rates to new highs and cutting harder materials than ever before.
In a perfect CNC world, the first part is always a good one. There’s no need for extra blanks or barstock. Setup times are only as long as is needed to swap out a few tools and load a new program. There’s never a crash, never the need to reprogram an inefficient bit of code. The operator just pushes the green button and out pops a finished workpiece minutes or hours later.
For Dale Mickelson, Yasda product manager at Methods Machine Tools Inc. (Sudbury, MA) and author of several books on hard milling, tackling heat-resistant superalloys (HRSAs) requires the perfect combination of machine, workholding, tooling, tool paths and coolant.
Sandvik Coromant’s Package Selector Application analyzes a 3D CAD model of a product and recommends the smallest packaging possible using an AI algorithm that calculates the product’s rotation.
The acquisition of CAD/CAM pioneer Mastercam by Sandvik Manufacturing Solutions will help further tooling developments.
While fossil fuels dominate the energy market, expect a new mix of parts as renewable energy and EVs grow in market share.
The most important step in digitizing any manufacturing or supply chain process is analysis of the ROI and business case and being able to demonstrate success to company leaders.
Fastems has published “The CNC Automation Guide for Existing Machine Tools” to help manufacturers through a transition into using FMS.
