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Delcam’s 2016 FeatureCAM and PowerMILL CAM at Southern Manufacturing

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2015-12-23 00:00:00

FeatureCAM 2016 to be shown at Southern Manufacturing now supports bar-fed mills


Delcam will demonstrate the 2016 releases of the company’s FeatureCAM feature-based programming system and its PowerMILL CAM system for high-speed and five-axis machining at the Southern Manufacturing exhibition to be held in Farnborough from February 9 to 11.


Some of the most important enhancements in FeatureCAM 2016 are further improvements to the Vortex high-efficiency area-clearance strategy. Vortex gives the fastest safe metal removal from solid carbide tooling, in particular designs that give deeper cuts by using the full flute length as the cutting surface. It produces toolpaths with a controlled engagement angle and so maintains the optimum cutting conditions for the complete roughing cycle, giving faster machining and longer tool life.


The ability has now been added to adjust and fine tune the non-cutting moves of 2.5D and 3D Vortex toolpaths, with options to retract the tool and/or to increase the feedrate. These options can be set individually, or can be combined to achieve an optimum toolpath, with a reduced cycle time.


Other enhancements in the 2016 release include support for bar-fed mills, more efficient turning, and user-interface improvements to make programming even easier and faster, in particular when using multiple set-ups.


The main new option in PowerMILL 2016 is the ability to mirror complete machining projects in one operation and to maintain automatically the machining characteristics, for example to specify automatically whether climb or conventional milling should be used in each section of the toolpath. Previously, only individual toolpaths could be mirrored.


Automatic mirroring saves considerable time whenever right- and left-hand versions are needed of a part or tool. It will also be faster to program the machining of symmetrical objects since it will be possible to program one half and then mirror the toolpaths to complete the program.


Simulation in PowerMILL has been improved with ability to simulate complex tool changes, an auto-translucency option that will allow viewing of the table attach point at all times, and the ability to draw translucently the safe areas for rapid moves.

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