Delcam’s latest CADCAM developments to be shown at MTA Vietnam

Delcam will demonstrate the latest innovations from its development team, the largest in the CAM industry, at the MTA Vietnam exhibition to be held in Ho Cho Minh City from 7th to 10th July. Programs on show will include PowerMILL for high-speed and five-axis machining; FeatureCAM for quick and easy feature-based CAM programming; PowerSHAPE for modelling for manufacture and reverse engineering and the PowerINSPECT inspection software.

The latest release of PowerMILL includes improvements to the Vortex high-efficiency area-clearance strategy, developments in toolpath simulation and verification, improved collision checking to also cover near misses, and more efficient raster finishing, area clearance and drilling, plus more options for customisation by users.

Complete verification, covering cutting moves, leads and links, and tool changes, can now be undertaken of a project for machine-tool issues such as collisions, saving considerable time compared to undertaking verification of each individual toolpath in turn. Comprehensive verification is performed, including ensuring that the machine tool is capable of running the proposed strategy, as well as checking for both machine-tool collisions and tooling collisions.

FeatureCAM was the world’s first feature-based programming software when it was launched in 1995. Constant development since then has ensured that the system has retained its leadership in programming speed and ease of use, while an increased range of strategies has been added to provide more efficient toolpaths giving greater productivity on a wider range of machines, including lathes, mills and mill-turn machines.

The 2015 R2 release incorporates a milling calculator to help users obtain the maximum benefit from the Vortex high-efficiency area-clearance strategy. Other enhancements, among the 280 customer-requested improvements since the initial 2015 release last September, include the ability to create multi-tool blocks within machine designs, better control over toolpath output and more efficient automatic selection of tools.

By offering a combination of solid, surface and direct modelling, together with reverse engineering, PowerSHAPE Pro provides the most comprehensive range of design techniques available in a single CAD program. Having all the different technologies in the same package reduces the need to transfer data between multiple programs and so streamlines any product-development process that requires both reverse-engineering and CAD functionality.

PowerSHAPE Pro can connect directly to most scanning hardware to capture and display scan data in real time. The 2015 R2 version includes a new split-screen alignment option that makes it quicker and easier to combine multiple scans, taken, for example, from the opposite sides of a part. The new method also allows more accurate snapping of alignment points, giving greater accuracy in the resulting single CAD model.

PowerINSPECT has included collision detection for many years to warn the user when there was a possibility of any collision between the probe and the item being inspected. Until now, the user then had to make the required changes to the probe path to avoid the collision.

With the new release, PowerINSPECT 2015, the software adjusts the probe path automatically if a direct move between inspection features could produce a collision. The software will calculate a new motion path that avoids the obstacle, typically by moving up and over the obstruction or around it.

A number of improvements in PowerINSPECT 2015 have made both data import and report generation much faster. The differences will be particularly apparent when reading large CAD models, such as a complete car body, and when producing longer reports with more graphical images.

10 June 2015