Freesteel Blog » Machining the competition

Machining the competition

Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 12:08 pm Written by:

I’m working today. But there is time between compilations of code. I avoided surfing the internet onto anything democracy-related, because then I’d’ve got lost in something interesting and would still be at it at 3am. No chance of that happening when you restrict yourself to the webpages of CADCAM companies.

It’s good to see some of them realizing that the correct format for showing off machining features is the video. Although the quality and content — let alone the lack of sound — is very poor, Delcam has produced a selection to be getting started with. The top one repeatedly shows their user interface interchanging between loops or blobs as it area clearing path goes around corners. Now I know they’ve got a whole machine shop in their building, so why don’t we see how it cuts metal?

MasterCAM has a much better set of videos, although the user interface to them is questionable, and the image is too big. They do give narration and fade nicely between the scenes. Choose Peel Mill in the selection of videos to find a description of their limited trachoidal milling solution, otherwise only mentioned in this press release.

Obviously, both companies haven’t yet reached the state of the art for horizontal trachoidal machining embodied in our four-year-old Adaptive Clearing strategy. If they want to save a lot of time and hassle developing it, they only need to ask. Our rates have been quite reasonable.

WorkNC has 3 videos showing their old Adaptive Trachoidal Roughing. This looks like a retrofit of trachoidalism on a standard offset area clearing algorithm, truncated in the case of a core. At least, like the MasterCAM feature, it shows the capability of this way of machining deeply and cutting with the side of the tool.

I’ve checked out cimatron, solidcam, Tebis, esprit, vero, edgecam, and what became of nc graphics, and none of them seem to have any videos.

There are some on surfware, but the funny thing about it is you can find a far better video of surfcam on youtube, because it’s got music. Just say No to that grinding metal noise. OncCNC has some videos too.

Here is a video of Adaptive Clearing in graphite. And here is a page on HSMWorks where they tell you about Netviewer — a programme that allows someone in Denmark to demo the software remotely on your computer. Why not video one of those demonstrations to make it easier to show up?

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