CAD CAM & controls
What should you be looking for in a CAM system and how can it
improve the efficiency of your machine, your work force and your
material utilisation? Part 2 of a detailed overview by Martin Bailey.
Small, medium or large?
Whatever the materials
you’re processing,
selecting the CAM system
must be given serious
thought up to board level
WHICH CAM system you select depends on your
company’s operation, machine tools in use, the quantities
and mix of parts being produced, materials processed and
their prices. The price point of software should will be
determined by the functionality and automation it offers.
Some companies entrust the selection of CAM software to
the CNC programming department alone; it should have
sponsorship and final expenditure sign-off at board level.
Few CAM systems range from ‘simple and inexpensive’
to full ‘no-hands’ automation. If your organisation
currently has no need for high functionality and
automation and you select a simple system, make sure it can
grow with you. In a year or two things could change. You
may need to program a new machine you’ve acquired; need
higher functionality and automation to cope with a higher
workload; and decide that, as material usage is increasing,
you want the most effective automatic nesting to exploit
potential material savings. Make sure that the CAM system
you select can be easily upgraded and that it can effectively
support any machine tool you may purchase in the future.
Also if you are forced to change to a CAM system from
different vendor in the future, your current component and
nesting files and technology databases could be
incompatible - and you’ll have to start all over again.
Multiple systems supporting different machine tools, will
significantly increase your CNC programming overheads,
and also limit the flexibility of your production
department; quick changes of jobs between machines
become difficult and keeping track of
revisions/modifications to components becomes a
nightmare, since numerous copies of same components will
reside on a number of different CAM systems.
Questions to analyse
■ Will one or two seats (licenses) of a particular CAM
software be sufficient to program machines we have or do
we need more? The answer depends on the level of
automation and functionality you select for your new CAM
system, but remember that more seats means more
personnel. It’s false economy to save by not buying advanced
automation if you then have to spend more on salaries.
68 MWP november 2008
■ Should we replace existing CAM systems programming
other machines within our facility to consolidate
programming of all machine tools into one system?
■ Does the vendor have postprocessors for all of our
machines and if not, can it develop the ones it doesn’t have?
■ How easy is it to get information in and out of the system
(such as CAD files, reporting etc)?
■ If we need more than one seat, do we need them to all
run concurrently? (Some vendors offer ‘floating licenses’
which allow a set number of users to work with the system
simultaneously.)
■ What type of parts are we nesting? Do we need automatic
nesting, and if so do we need rectangular or free form? How
important is nesting efficiency? Are we cutting now or in
the future expensive materials eg composites?
■ How much automation do we require? Can the CAM
system we are evaluating be integrated with our MRP
system? Can our MRP system supply the CAM system with
component orders automatically? Can the CAM system
receive such automatic ordering and report back to MRP
current status? Would we like the CAM system to run and
execute component orders and program machines
unattended?
The CAM business has many acronyms and terms to
describe functionality. Whilst there will be features that you
know you definitely will need, don’t get bogged down in
creating a features list. Concentrate on the end goal –
accurate and efficient CNC programs to drive your
machines, with the minimum amount of effort required to
generate them. What you are prepared to pay (specifically in
regards to automation) will dictate the level of effort that
will be required. Low cost systems might generate accurate
NC code but may not be optimised to run quickly on the
machine, may waste material through inefficient nests and
may be cumbersome to use. Automation may come at a
price, but the savings quickly mount up and can often easily
be quantified, making what might seem like a high
investment more palatable.
www.jetcam.com
Part 3 of this article will appear in the January issue of
MWP.
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