CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

October 2005

Product News

Delcam to Highlight Five-Axis Machining at Alumotive Exhibition

Delcam will demonstrate the latest strategies for five-axis machining within its PowerMILL CAM system at the Alumotive exhibition to be held in Modena, Italy, from 20th to 22nd October. The exhibition is very timely for Delcam, not only because the company has just released a new version of PowerMILL with extra five-axis strategies but also because there is a growing interest in five-axis machining in the automotive, aerospace, marine and autosport industries.

The range of applications for five-axis machining is widening all the time. The manufacture of aerostructures with this approach is, of course, well established but there is also increasing use in the manufacture of tooling for composites and in the production of press tools and casting equipment for aluminium, plus trimming and other finish machining operations on components from both the materials. There is also a strong interest in using five-axis machining to machine short runs of components from solid rather than using castings.

Such a wide variety of applications requires a large number of different machining strategies. The full range within PowerMILL includes machining through a point or to a point, or to or from a line or curve; programming using a reference surface; swarf machining; and five-axis trimming, pocketing and drilling. For all the options, the software makes both positional and continuous five-axis programming much easier than is possible with the more complicated software traditionally used by the large corporations in the aerospace and automotive industries.

For all its five-axis machining options, PowerMILL incorporates automatic adjustment of tilt angles for both lead and lean (Lead is measured in the cutting direction; lean at right angles to the cutting direction.). Control of lead angle gives better cutting conditions, while the lean angle can be used to avoid collisions.

PowerMILL also includes many safety features to ensure that five-axis machining can be programmed easily and efficiently, without any risk of gouging either during cutting moves or during the leads and links. For example, five-axis collision checking is automatically undertaken for the tool holder as well as for the cutter, while contact point analysis allows the user to ensure that only the cutting surface touches the component and that rubbing with the shank is avoided.

Automatic collision avoidance has been added to change the tool axis when collisions may occur. The software automatically tilts the cutter away from the obstacle by the specified tolerance and then returns the cutting angle to the value set for the overall toolpath once the obstacle has been cleared.

Another important advantage of five-axis machining with PowerMILL is that the software works with the full range of different cutting tools, including end mills, tapered tools, and ball-nose, tipped-radius and off-centre, tipped-radius cutters. Many of the other systems currently available are limited to using only ball nosed and end mill cutters, which are not always the most efficient.

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