Delcam Indonesia to Launch Latest Machining Software at IMTEX


Delcam Indonesia will look to build on its record sales levels so far this year at the Manufacturing Indonesia exhibition to be held in Jakarta from 6th to 9th December. Sales for the first nine months of this year were more double those for the first three quarters of 2005.

At the exhibition, Delcam Indonesia will demonstrate the new releases of the company's CAM systems, PowerMILL and FeatureCAM. Both new releases feature a range of additional machining strategies that will enable users to increase the productivity from their machine tools.

Enhancements to the latest release of PowerMILL include a wider range of five-axis strategies for both roughing and finishing, three-axis swarf machining and parametric surface finishing, together with faster calculation times, improved point distribution and easier data management.

The range of five-axis roughing strategies in PowerMILL has been increased to match the wide list of options previously available for finishing. It now includes machining to or from a point, orientation through a line or curve, and programming using a reference surface. Using five-axis roughing can significantly reduce the number of set-ups needed to machine many components. It can also be used to give a more efficient cutting angle that will allow more material to be removed with each pass.

New three-axis options include a spiral roughing strategy that can reduce machining times when used instead of offset machining, parametric offset machining, which can give a higher quality surface finish by avoiding sudden changes of direction, three-axis swarf machining to finish steep or vertical walls with the side of the tool, and interleaved constant-Z finishing, which gives a smoother transition when machining a combination of step and shallow areas.

In addition, PowerMILL can now add extra points to a toolpath and so take advantage of the capability of modern machine tool controls to handle much larger amounts of data. Increasing the number of points in the toolpath can give more even machining with less vibration and more consistent loading on the tool. Both these improvements allow faster machining with less wear of the cutter, especially with five-axis equipment, as well as giving a smoother surface finish with both three-axis and five-axis operation.

FeatureCAM 2007 includes major enhancements to the software's automatic feature recognition functionality and to its range of 3D milling strategies. The new milling strategies are based on proven Delcam technology that has enabled significant increases in calculation speeds for 3D toolpaths and improved the surface finish that can be achieved.

In addition, the new version makes the creation and editing of toolpaths quicker, easier and more flexible. Instead of requiring the user to develop or change the feature properties and then generate or re-generate the toolpaths, FeatureCAM users can now create or edit roughing and finishing toolpaths independent of part features.

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