CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
8 March 2007
Product News
GibbsCAM Support of Tornos TB-Deco Machine Tools Announced
Gibbs and Associates , developer of GibbsCAM®, software for programming CNC machine tools, announced that GibbsCAM now supports the entire product line of Tornos Deco machine tools, including the TB-Deco model. This recent accomplishment was realized through the combined efforts of Gibbs, Tornos and Productec, the GibbsCAM Reseller located in Switzerland.
"GibbsCAM MTM is an ideal programming environment for multi-task machine tools," observes François Steulet, Productec's CEO, "but the Tornos TB-Deco's unique style of programming which uses pulses instead of G-code. This required extremely specialized post processors to be developed. Fortunately, we had the necessary post processor and GibbsCAM DTK experience and were able to work closely with Tornos to develop a solution."
The TB-Deco line was implemented using pulses because Tornos believe these machines provide customers greater accuracy and repeatability compared to machines which operate off G-code. But because these speciality machines are not G-code based, they require a unique implementation in order for a CAM system to support them. Tornos has begun to work with a limited number of CAM providers to provide assistance in integrating their CAM systems with the Tornos TB-Deco machines. As the leader in CNC programming support of MTM machines, GibbsCAM was one of the CAM products Tornos selected.
The GibbsCAM MTM solution for Tornos Deco required the development of 7 custom post processors, which correspond to specific machine tool configurations. Special Tornos functions, such as 'tourbillonning' and 'polygoning', are supported by the post processors. The series of baseline posts developed were:
• Deco 7/10a with 5-axis, C, 1 spindle
• Deco 7/10a with 7-axis, C1, C4, 2 spindle.
• Deco 7/10a with 9-axis, C1, C4, 2 spindle
• Deco 13 with 10 axis, C1, C4, 2 spindle
• Deco 20 and 26 with 5-axis, C1, C4, 2 spindle
• Deco 20 and 26 with 8-axis, C1, C4, 2 spindle
• Deco 20 and 26 with 10-axis, C1, C4, 2 spindle
The GibbsCAM MTM Tornos software makes use of Tornos TB-Deco 2007 toolkit which is expected to be available from Tornos in the first quarter of 2007.
Other Tornos machine tools, which operate off of more conventional G-code, can be supported by GibbsCAM using factory-supplied, custom post processors which generate machine-specific G-code.
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