SOFTWARE REDUCES TOOLPATH LENGTH MACHINING CYCLE TIMES
VoluMill? 3.5 from Celeritive Technologies has several enhancements, including Freeway Linking? that lifts the tool slightly off the floor of the part and detours it at high speed around obstacles along a smooth path.
Posted: September 20, 2010
Celeritive Technologies, Inc. (Cave Creek, AZ), an independent, third-party developer of innovative high-speed machining technologies that increase machine shop productivity, announces release 3.5 of its VoluMill? toolpath software. VoluMill, the industry standard for 2- and 3-axis high-performance milling, now includes major improvements in version 3.5 that slash part programming and machining cycle times even further.
"The primary focus of version 3.5 is on reducing overall path length and machine cycle times,? said Joe McChesney, VoluMill product manager. ?Although customers have consistently reported cycle-time reductions of 70 percent or more with VoluMill, we realized that there was still room for improvement, particularly when repositioning the tool between cuts. VoluMill 3.5 has exceeded even our expectations.?
Testing of VoluMill 3.5 has shown reductions in overall toolpath length by up to a third over version 3.0, and reductions in retracts to the rapid plane by up to 90 percent. Much of this improvement is due to Freeway Linking?, a new technique that lifts the tool slightly off the floor of the part and detours it at high speed around obstacles along a smooth path. In addition, VoluMill 3.5 introduces major improvements in toolpath sorting that minimize the length of linking moves between cutting passes.
Other enhancements include avoidance of fixtures or other obstacles, improved cutting around islands, and better use of multiprocessor computers, including dramatic reductions in processing time for the new generation of quad-core processors. In addition, VoluMill Universal?, a version of VoluMill which can be used with any CAD/CAM system, contains several new features that make part programming even easier.
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