Have you scrapped any jobs lately – or was it the machine itself this time? Well, if your answer was "yes," you can rest assured that you weren’t alone. Most shops have scrapped, or at least seriously damaged tooling during manufacture – usually while cutting 3D surfaces or rapid traversing towards the billet.
Mason Pinder had no difficulty justifying investment in VERICUT after scrapping an expensive mold tool in 1996.
Mason Pinder (Toolmakers) Ltd. is part of the Polypipe PLC group of companies in the UK. They specialize in producing molds of up to 20 tons for pipe joints, consumer goods, toys, and automotive products.
The company is based in Thorne, near Doncaster, Yorkshire in the Northern part of England. They have four NC programmers and 10 machine tools including Rambaudi, Giddings & Lewis, KO Ming, Leadwell, Hurco, DMG DMU50.
"Most of our jobs are one-offs," says David Mason. "We can’t afford to prove out every job on the machining side and welding up gouges isn’t a favorable option. It made sense to go down the software route and get the job right before any tool touches it."
Mason Pinder chose VERICUT because of its reliability and ability to prove out the post processed data, not just the CAD/CAM’s internal CL data. "We concentrate on axis verification. We had a problem in that the C-axis would have to unwind after two revs, but it was nice to be able to verify the tool retract and unwind on VERICUT. It’s also nice to be able to verify over-travel when you are getting near the axis travel limits," says Mason.
"VERICUT has made it much easier to see what’s going on when we’re using our new DMG DMU50V 5-axis, high speed machining center," Mason added.
Mason Pinder also takes advantage of VERICUT’s feed rate optimization capabilities. "We’ve seen 50% reductions in cycle times when roughing large jobs," says Mason. "When we first started using OptiPath we concentrated on the feed rate option; now we use the constant chip thickness capability. With jobs up to 200 hours long, 50% saving is significant – like having another machine tool."
It also optimizes spindle speeds, relevant to high speed machining operations.
Unlike reactive hardware solutions, OptiPath automatically knows what area of the tool is in contact with the workpiece, load on the tool and cycle times. Its power comes from modifying the G-Codes to increase feed rates as less material is being cut, and decrease them to protect tooling as more material is being removed. For example, when cutting three 20mm deep square pockets, in a row 50mm apart, OptiPath ramps the machine feed up to the maximum until the tool is just within a safe distance of its position. Once on position, the first picket will be cut according to the programmed tool path, but with optimized feed rates. When finished, the tool will move to a safe clearance and fast feed to the next pocket, where the process is repeated.
Airbus is selling so well that the demand to increase build rate has never been higher. BAE Systems (Filton, UK) needed a simple way to improve throughput - it found the answer in VERICUT.
With VERICUT, engineers at Stellex Monitor modeled the Sidewinder and Spar Mill machines.
Tell Tool of Westfield, Mass., has integrated VERICUT CNC simulation software into its numerical control program prove-out process.
VERICUT enabled us to start ordinary production after a minimum of time. Since this product is new for Volvo Aero Norge and our company had never before had parts with similar machining complexity, it is difficult to estimate the amount of cost saving.
Before implementing VERICUT, the company experienced the usual time-consuming and expensive manufacturing problems related to NC program prove-outs such as scrap loss, broken tooling, and a danger of occasional machine crash.
Over the last two years, AH has used Machine Simulation to speed the implementation of several new 5-axis machine tools.
VERICUT showed the NC programmers leftover or heavy stock." And the software detected a couple of places where the depth of cut was too large and tools were shanking out," said Collings. They then went back and corrected the errors in the tool path before
Dassault, Seclin initially purchased VERICUT in order to reduce the number of manual prove-outs using polystyrene material, which represented a significant expense in terms of time and money.
VERICUT enabled the designers and programmers see exactly what they were building as and in-process model in different stages of the machining cycle.
We utilized VERICUT to verify the CNC programs for cutting the tooling before they were sent to the machine control,
To protect their investment, they have been using VERICUT since 1996. They have two people to verify the accuracy of their G-code files.
"When we first started using OptiPath we concentrated on the feed rate option; now we use the constant chip thickness capability. With jobs up to 200 hours long, 50% saving is significant like having another machine tool."
The entire process took less than two hours and no manpower was required, whereas, creating the same pattern manually (the old way), would have taken one of our designers several days.
The verification process stays ahead of the actual machine position in the NC code being verified. Opera-tors can see errors before they occur.
The bottom line? Using VERICUT has made Supreme's existing machine tools more productive. Enthusiasm is up, delivery times have been reduced, and pricing is more competitive.delivery times have been reduced, and pricing is more competitive.
Using VERICUT to compare the electrode burn with the mold cavity ensures that we have all the correct clearances in the electrodes and that we have 100% clean-up." says Allen.
If I was using VERICUT at the time I would've caught the problem, and had a chance to fix it before it damaged the part.
Now I rarely see the potential crashes because the students find and correct them before I review the work. Catching those costly problems is a non-event now!
VERICUT can change speeds and feeds according to cutting conditions including difference in material and tooling. It is done automatically; the programmer does not have to make even one manual insert into the code."
Flying shrapnel from shattered cutting tools and components is avoided by using VERICUT to test student programs before they are run on NC machines.
The NC programmers at Ingersoll also rely on the simulation software to prevent mistakes when programming complex, five-axis parts.
After creating the NC programs in Mastercam, they began simulating the machining process in VERICUT by simulating the G-code data. There often can be a difference between the motion as programmed and the code after it's run through the post processor
After selecting VERICUT for third-party verification, each NC programmer attended two days of basic training where they experienced first-hand the type of results they could expect to achieve.
The program simulates milling, drilling, turning, wire EDM, and mill/turn machining operations using both G-codes and CAM output.
VERICUT provides simulation capabilities for the all the 3-5 axis and wire EDM parts, with focused control over the orientation of our 5-axis machine tool including the cutters used on that machine.
The inspection probe is created as a tool in VERICUT so the complete in- cycle gauging sequence is checked for collisions.
The bottom was machined first. This effort took about 24 hours from start to finish. By using VERICUT software from CGTech, Elliot was able to test the NC program for any problems before it was ever cut on the machine.
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With data exported from NX, Vericut simulates the cutting process on the shop floor utilizing the machine G-code to detect any issues prior to NC Program release.
Mason Pinder had no difficulty justifying investment in VERICUT after scrapping an expensive mold tool in 1996.