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An interview with Alan Levine managing director at Open Mind Technologies Inc is presented. Levine said that as with all Open Mind upgrade releases, hyperMill 2017.2 has a broad range of new technologies and enhancements. This release covers 2.5D through fiveaxis milling, mill-turn and new modules such as the hyperCAD-S Electrode module. Cycle time improvements are clearly important to end-user return on investment and productivity. Many years ago, these enhancements would focus solely on better toolpaths. New CAM software technology developments also focus on interaction of CAM software with CNC controls, or CAM software with cutting tool applications. These integrated solutions make a larger impact for software users and reward those that invest in their asset infrastructure. Ultimately the goal is to make better parts-better in terms of time, cost and quality. Faster is one component of making better parts, but not the only measure. CAM software plays an important rule in achieving this goal, and this is often in combination with machine tools, controls, tooling and fixturing systems.
Manufacturing Engineering: What's new in your latest hyperMill CAM software update?
Alan Levine: As with all Open Mind upgrade raleases, hyperMill 2017.2 has a broad range of new technologies and enhancements. This release covers 2.5D through five-axis milling, mill-turn and new modules such as the hyper-CAD-S Electrode module. Soma of the new or improved topics include a T-elot geometry feature to augment the T-slot on 3D model cutting strategy, automated creation of reference geometry for swarf milling, enhancement to 3D-optimized roughing to modify feed rates and adjust stepdown depending on stock conditions, and five-axis rework enhancement to change feed rates based on conditions with 'trim to model.'
ME: How critical is speeding key machining cycles, like roughing, in today's production environment?
Levine: Cycle-time improvements are clearly important to end-user return on investment and productivity. Many years ago, these enhancements would focus solely on better toolpaths. New CAM software technology developments also focus on interaction of CAM software with CNC controls, or CAM software with cutting tool applications. These integrated solutions make a larger impact for software users and reward those that invest in their asset infrastructure.
Ultimately the goal is to make better parts-better in terms of time, cost and quality. Faster is one componant of making better parts, but not the only measure. CAM software plays an important role in achieving this goal, and this is often in combination with machine tools, controls, tooling and fixtiling systems.
ME: What key technologies are included in your latest hyperMill update, and how do they impact speed of roughing, drilling, and finishing operations?
Levine: Open Mind offers the hyperMill Maxx Machining performance package, which currently includes three distinct machining technologies for roughing, finishing and drilling. All provide enormous cycle-time reduction, as well as positive integration with machines and cutters.
The hyperMill Maxx Machining roughing component is based on our implementation of Celeritive Technologies' VoluMill kernel. This has a proven record of greetly reducing roughing cut times and increasing cutter life. The hyperMill Maxx Machining drilling component uses a patented technique for five-axis helical drilling for utilizing standard cutters to open bores and pockets with outstanding chip evacuation and reduced machining times.
The hyperMill Maxx Machining finishing module is the centerpiece of this set, providing up to 90% reduction for finishing time of many surface types. Finishing times become more important as modern roughing techniques have reduced roughing cut times. Open Mind has developed innovative five-axis tangent plane and tangent machining strategies for the highly efficient finishing of planer, ruled, and general surfaces [curvature dependent] using conical barrel cutters. This module also includes many details to simplify programming and obtain high-quality surfaces with either five-axis or 3+2 indexed machining. Patented innovations also allow the conical barrel cutter to reach further into comers and cover the largest potential regions of these components. Surfaces are automatically cleaned with bounding passes, using the ball end of the conical barrel cutter.
ME: How difficult is it for a CAM developer to customize components or modules like VoluMill in order to target your customers' machining operations?
Levine: Open Mind implemants the VoluMill kernel from Celeritive Technologies based on a dose cooperation with our development teams. In addition to applying the high-performance roughing techniques to 2D pocketing and 3D roughing strategies, Open Mind also appled the techniques to five-axis operations through the hyperMill Shape Offset roughing module. Such an implementation is not available in other CAM integrations of VoluMill. Only hyperMill Maxx Machining extends this technology to five-axis processes.
Open Mind has integrated hyperMill within our hyperCADS S tor CAM environment as well as integrating hyperMill within the SolidWorks and Inventor platforms.
ME: In what industries are users beet applying these hyperMill Maxx Machining techniques; can you give examples?
Levine: The hyperMill Maxx Machining roughing module applies well to components with large roughing depths, such as mold and die and aerospace parts. It can elso be applied to rotating components in energy and aircraft industries.
The Maxx Machining finishing module using conical barrel cutters is best applied to large surface that are not efficiently machined with a ball end mill, or are also too long for swarf milling. Some examples include multiple tace surfaces on automotive fascia molds, large aero-structural components, and even In one case on amaller components used within unmanned aircraft. Applications are being extended as this novel technology is applied. Some users are also designing non-critical surfaces to be targeted for machining with these strategies using conical barrel cutters.
ME: The latest update includes the new hyperCAD-S Electrode CAD module; whet does it do for your users?
Levine: The hyperCAD-S Electrode module is a utility for manufacturing electrodes easily and safely, and is of interest to many of our mold-and-die customers. Certain geometries with features such as deep slots or email corner radii are not easily milled. The Electrode module is a wizard tool designed to seamlessly guide a user through the steps to select geometric features to generate sinker EDM electrodes, with needed parameters for extensions and offsets, spark gap diatances, and the ability to select optimal EDM holders from a library to drive milling toolpaths from stored programming macros. These processes can produce electrodes from complex models within minutes instead of up to four hours using other techniques. The automated procedure aleo includes collision checking to ensure that the electrode will not interfere with the part.
ME: How does the current CAD/CAM software environment look and how do you see the overall business climate for the near-term future?
Levine: Open Mind focuses on the CAM market and sees strong growth potential in the coming years. The largest growth in this field is with five-axis and multitasking machines. These machines give end users maximum productivity and quality improvements, allowing multiple processes and efficient machine usage of shop-floor space. Progressive CAM software complements these machines and is critical, if not necessary, for maximizing the manufactuer's investment.
We also notice in some cases that the sales cycle from first contact to license purchase is much faster now than in the past. This may be due to the impending arrival of new equipment, or that purchasers often do more webbased research-such as web sites, blogs and articles-and then present themselves to prospective GAM supplere with strong ideas already in mind.
Copyright Society of Manufacturing Engineers Aug 2017