Delcam will demonstrate the latest developments in its CAD/CAM products at WESTEC. The range of enhancements is intended to enable faster and easier programming for CNC machining producing faster and more efficient tool paths, allowing greater machine productivity, the company said.

"The most important enhancement in PowerMILL 2012 is Flowline Machining," said a company spokesperson. "This dedicated strategy for high-speed machining divides the toolpath between a pair of drive curves in a constant number of passes rather than having a varying number of passes with a constant stepover. This approach gives a lower cycle time and quality part surface finish, minimizing wear on the cutter and the machine tool.

"FeatureCAM 2012 includes a range of enhancements for quick and accurate CAM programming for production machining on lathes, mills and turn/mill machines. Two new strategies are back boring and spiral roughing. Back boring allows more parts to be completed in a single setup, with larger bores able to be produced on the reverse side of the part. Spiral roughing can be used instead of Z-level roughing. It uses a single continuous toolpath instead of a series of levels giving a smoother finish with no dwell marks."

Major highlights of PartMaker 2012 include a new module for the simulation of vertical and horizontal machining centers, improved simulation for the latest breed of multi-axis, turn-mill and Swiss-lathe machine architectures, more powerful surface machining strategies and improved visualization throughout programming, as well as a host of additional productivity enhancements, the company said.

The 2012 version of Delcam for SolidWorks, the SolidWorks Certified Gold Partner product for CAM programming from within the SolidWorks environment, includes programming of wire EDM for the first time, alongside the comprehensive options for the programming of turning, mill-turn, drilling and 2- through 5-axis milling.

The major change to the 2012 release of PowerSHAPE is a range of direct modeling options. Unlike other programs that have incorporated direct modeling as part of a product design system, the PowerSHAPE options are focused on design for manufacture, in particular on preparing product designs for the development of molds and other types of tooling, the company said.

"The new functionality will enable tooling designers to tackle all the common problems that they find in product designs, such as insufficient draft or inappropriate fillet sizes," said the spokesperson. "Direct modeling is faster to use than surface modeling and so can shorten the overall time needed to produce tooling designs. Together with the extensive data translation and data repair options already available in PowerSHAPE, the addition of direct modeling gives a unique range of capabilities to programmers and designers."

For more information contact:

Delcam

877-335-2261

marketing@delcam.com

www.delcam.com

Booth #2812