good Evaluating a Sheet Metal-Composite Cam system
Cam systems are used to take electronic part drawings (Cad files), process and 'nest' them onto sheets or rolls of material and change the resulting nesting layouts to a series of coordinates and machining instructions, known as Cnc programs so that the part can be accurately and effectively machined on a definite engine tool. The resulting code is sent electronically to the engine tool, ready for machining. These Cnc programs are very definite to each single Cnc engine technology and engine controller.
Evaluating a Sheet Metal-Composite Cam system
There are some stages to creating a Cnc program, starting with the definition (drawing) of component geometry if Cad facilities in Cam ideas are being used, or with importing and 'healing' of component geometry which was created in an external Cad or unfolding software. Once the literal, component geometry is available within the Cam system, tooling and/or profiling/cutting facts needs to be added. Depending on the Cam ideas in use, this can be done interactively, automatically or in some compound of both. This facts differs from engine to engine and over engine tool technologies in use.
Once all of the machining facts has been applied to components the next task is to 'nest' them - squeezing as many components on the sheet or a roll of given size as possible. A nest might consist of the same parts or a compound of distinct parts, and can be classified as whether rectangular or 'free form' (true shape). Rectangular nesting, as the name suggests nests each component as if it were a rectangle, which will consequent in a important waste of material if you are cutting many irregular shapes. With rectangular nesting parts may be nested at distinct angles, but are usually nested at 0 and 90 degrees. Free form nesting offers the best material yield by being able to nest parts at any angle and also taking benefit of any scrap material within larger components, such as cut-outs, etc. Depending on the level of automation within a single Cam system, the placements of parts will whether be a hand-operated or self-acting process (or could be a compound of the two).
Manual nesting for distinct components is often performed by dragging and dropping parts on the nest, also known as bump nesting. Unless the operator is very skilled, this process can consequent in important material waste, and in any case is invariably a very slow process. Because of this, many companies currently produce so called 'static' nests, which were created manually and are usually re-used. The qoute with this is that all of the parts will be produced each time a single nest is run on the machine, regardless of whether they are all needed or not. 'Dynamic self-acting nesting' on the other hand allows for unique nests to be created as and when required, providing a 'Just In Time' coming whilst retaining high material efficiency. This of policy is especially leading when processing costly materials.
A cheap Cam ideas should, among others, allow you to also consider:
How parts will be unloaded - depending on engine technology and part size, parts may be unloaded through a part chute ('trap door'), cut off by a right angle shear attachment, micro-tagged to keep them in place whilst on the engine and manually removing them afterwards, picked by a robot arm or a special unloader, etc. What rotations a component will be constrained to, if any (usually because the material has a grain, such as brushed stainless or composite fabrics) Heat avoidance - when cutting thicker materials, heat can build up when cutting more intricate areas. In these instances the user or the ideas must be able to specify cutting path which will prevent excessive heat build up by cutting elsewhere on the sheet until such area has sufficiently cooled whether tasteless line cutting should be used between parts on the nest or a sheet 'skeleton' between parts will be left. There is a number of considerations dictating this, such as the price of material, sheet thickness and its resulting integrity, engine technology in use (moving or stationary sheet), etc. Clustering components together, 'broken orders' - for one fancy or another, you may identify a need to group obvious parts together on a single sheet as much as inherent and a good auto nesting factory will allow you to do this positively Nesting flexibility - many free form nesting modules will run their single nesting algorithm once, producing not so spectacular results, whereas others will run through various nesting algorithms and can be set to run for a desired period of time from few seconds to say overnight, to deliver the best inherent material yield
Some systems will intelligently 'learn' your preferred tool placement settings as you continue to apply tooling, fast becoming self-sufficient. At this point we now have our nest with all of the cutting facts applied; however there is an additional one leading notice that has a important impact on the cutting time - the sequence in which these instructions are processed. Sequencing can whether be an interactive or self-acting process and there can be a vast inequity in the sequencing efficiency between various Cam systems.
We are now in a position to create Nc code, however programmers will often want to simulate the job prior to running it on the machine. On a capable Cam system, simulation will show exactly what will happen when the nest is run on the engine tool. A large number of time and money can be saved by graphically simulating the machining process, and identifying any inherent problems, such as a component being cut/punched/unloaded incorrectly, wrong machining sequences specified, etc. Simulation gives the Cnc programmer a great deal of confidence, assuring that when the operator presses the Green Start button on the engine tool, he is not going to have any major disasters.
Once we are satisfied with the simulation, a Cnc agenda for the engine can be generated. This is usually done by a special module in the Cam system, which takes the 'generic' machining data stored in the Cam system's database for a single nest and converts it to Cnc agenda instructions a single engine tool will 'understand'. This is referred to as 'post processing' and the module is usually called 'postprocessor' (regardless whether it is an internal or external function to the Cam system). Just about every engine tool requires distinct instructions and to complicate the matter still further, each engine tool can offer a wide range of options such as complicated loading/unloading systems, tapping attachments, labeling devices, etc. Additionally, there are so called 'combination' machines, which combine two or even three distinct machining technologies in one engine tool (ie. Punch/Laser or Punch/Right Angle Shear combinations, etc) and these can also have any or all special options, mentioned above. When you purchase your Cam ideas from and independent vendor, you will pick a postprocessor to match your machine. This is positively one of the most leading aspects of a Cam ideas as without a well constructed postprocessor you will not get the best out of your machine. A postprocessor could be compared to a printer driver - taking your printed document and converting it to something that your printer can understand and produce. Ask the vendor for details of some of their existing customers that have the same engine tool so that you can find out their experiences. If the engine is new and no postprocessor exists, you will probably need to provide engine programming hand-operated and other facts to the Cam vendor in order to allow them to fabricate the required postprocessor for you.
When should an assosication reconsider buying a new Cam system?
When a first engine tool is purchased - that gorgeous piece of machinery just installed in your factory becomes an costly 'paper weight' if you cannot feed it fast enough with dependable Cnc programs! Most engine tool manufacturers offer some sort of Cnc programming ideas with their machines. These may come from independent software vendors or may be industrialized by the engine manufacturer. The ones industrialized by engine manufacturers usually maintain only their own engine tools, so keep in mind that if you acquire such Cam ideas and you resolve to buy an additional one engine tool from an additional one manufacturer in the future, your Cam ideas will not be compatible with it and you will need an additional one one to agenda the new machine. In any case, it is all the time a good idea to correlate offerings from other independent Cam ideas vendors when purchasing a engine tool. When you are buying an additional one engine tool and you have an existing Cam ideas or systems which cannot maintain it. In such cases it would be frugal to search for the transfer of the existing Cam system(s) with a single one which can maintain both of your machines and is also 'future proof' as much as possible. If you assosication has a collection of various Cam systems supporting a collection of various engine tools and you or somebody else in your assosication finally decided to stop the unmanageable mess and waste of resources such situation creates and combine all the programming into one single Cam system. If you want to heighten output yield and minimize material wastage If you desire to fully automate component ordering, nesting, Cnc agenda generation and heighten engine efficiency and loading If you desire any compound of the above
'Small, medium or large?' The price point of software that you value will be determined by the functionality and automation it offers. As with everything else, you get what you pay for. It is a fact that although Cam systems have impact on numerous areas of the business, many companies make the mistake of tasking the option of Cam software to the Cnc programming agency alone. Ideally it should have sponsorship and final expenditure sign-off at board level, members of which should understand inherent impact of it on the whole operation.
Which Cam ideas you should adopt depends very much on your company's operation, engine tools in use and the quantities and mix of parts being produced. Materials you are processing and their prices also form strongly in this evaluation.
There are numerous Cam systems available worldwide, offering various levels of functionality, but only few offer a range of levels from the fairly straightforward and cheap to full 'no-hands' automation. If you resolve that your assosication currently has no need for high functionality and automation and selects a lower level Cam system, make sure that it will grow with you. You may have only one straightforward engine tool today with puny programming needs, but in a year or two the situation may change and you suddenly comprehend that you need to agenda an additional one engine or two that you just acquired, and that you need higher Cam functionality and automation to be able to cope with the potentially dramatically increased workload. At that time you may also resolve that, as your material usage is increasing, you want the most productive self-acting nesting to cash in on inherent material savings. Because of this, you want to make sure now that the Cam ideas you adopt can be positively upgraded to high levels of functionality and automation and that it can effectively maintain any engine tool you may purchase in the future.
Take into catalogue that should you be forced to change to a Cam ideas from distinct vendor sometimes in the future, your current component and nesting files and your technology databases will be most likely incompatible with the new Cam ideas and you will have to start all over again. Also, should you end up having (or perhaps already have) two or more programming systems supporting distinct engine tools, you will not only significantly increase your Cnc programming overheads, but also limit the flexibility of your output department, as quick changes of jobs between machines become difficult and holding track of revisions/modifications to components become a nightmare, since numerous copies of same components will reside on a number of distinct Cam systems... Questions to analyze:
How many engine tools do we need to program? Will one or two seats (licenses) of a single Cam software be enough to agenda machine(s) we have or do we need more than that? The reply to this examine will very much depend on the level of automation and functionality you adopt for your new Cam system, but remember that more seats (licenses) also need more personnel to control them. It is a false cheaper to save x number of cash not buying industrialized automation where available, if you then spend two, three times as much on personnel salaries within the first 12 months! Should we replace existing Cam systems programming other machines within our factory to combine programming of all engine tools into one system? Does the vendor have postprocessors for all of our machines and if not, are they capable to fabricate the ones they do not have? How easy is it to get facts in and out of the ideas (such as Cad files, reporting etc)? If we need more than one seat (license) of the software, do we need them to all run concurrently? (Some vendors offer 'floating licenses' which allow a set number of users to work with the ideas simultaneously) What type of parts are we nesting? Do we need self-acting nesting, and if so do we need rectangular or free form? How leading is nesting efficiency? Are we cutting now or in the time to come costly materials, ie. Composites? How much automation do we require? Can the Cam ideas we are evaluating be integrated with our Mrp system? Can our Mrp ideas provide the Cam ideas with component orders automatically? Can the Cam ideas receive such self-acting ordering and report back to Mrp current status? Would we like the Cam ideas to run and execute component orders and agenda machines unattended?
Like many industries the Cam company has a vast array of acronyms and terms to describe functionality. Whilst there will be features that you know you certainly will need, do not get too bogged down in creating a features list. combine on the end goal - literal, and productive Cnc programs to drive your machines, with the minimum number of effort required to create it. What you are ready to pay (specifically in regards to automation) will essentially dictate the level of effort that will be required. Low cost systems might create literal, Nc code but it may not be optimised to run fast on the machine, may waste material through inefficient nests and may be cumbersome to use. Automation may come at a price, but the savings fast mount up and can often positively be quantified, manufacture what might seem like a steep investment much more palatable.
The process of evaluating a ideas The key to an productive assessment process is being able to demonstrate quantifiable savings in three key areas:
Staff time, face programming, reporting and whatever else related to the Cam process engine cycle time (also referred to as runtime) Material utilisation
All of the above have quantifiable costs. Before you even reconsider evaluating Cam systems you need to understand what those costs current are. Man-hours are generally straightforward enough to cost, as are your engine run times and costs, although it is all the time a worthwhile practice to consequent a few jobs through all processes and note all costs related with them. Material efficiency is not much more difficult to fancy if you look at it in terms of waste rather than output. Obviously, the lower the waste, the better off your company is and there are potentially huge savings to be made with the right software. Once you have a clear understanding of all the above, you are ready to move onto the next stage - the benchmark comparison.
Calculating your return on investment By now you should have a clearer idea of what you need, so it's time to start investigating the market. Recommendations should carry more weight, especially if they come from users that have the same machines as you. Once you have excellent your vendors you need to dispose for a benchmark comparison. provide each vendor with a series of parts in the form of Dxf or Iges files, , along with tooling and nesting parameters and ask them to achieve the following:
Demonstrate the process of interactively and (if applicable) automatically tooling the parts Demonstrate the process of interactively and (if applicable) automatically nesting the parts Demonstrate how easy it is to move parts or nests between machines (useful in the event of a engine breakdown) provide the final nests and reports so that you can correlate the efficiency against your own nests Demonstrate how facts can be extracted from the ideas for reporting purposes so you can correlate it with current methods of creating similar reports. See if further beneficial facts can be retrieved that may be unavailable using your current methods
It is leading to check and recheck the figures that you are provided with - do not take them on face value as it has been known for figures or nests to be doctored to make them appear more favourable. Check to ensure that no parts are overlapping on the nest or that they have not been rescaled slightly in order to fit a particularly complicated nest. Check gaps between components and components and material edges. Due to each engine generally being uniquely configured it probably will not be inherent for them to provide you with resulting Cnc programs to check engine run time.
In addition to the savings that you can tally up there may be other benefits which might not be so easy to spot but that will help in providing a quicker return nonetheless. For example, more productive nesting and the potential to produce complicated dynamic nests fast might allow you to standardise on fewer material sizes. Not only would this make stockholding simpler it can have a knock-on consequent on your purchasing power. Once you have your set of figures it is then a straightforward process of adding them up and comparing old versus new. Take the inequity and divide it by 52 (or your company's number of working weeks). You now know to the week when your Cam ideas will have paid for itself!
Various Cam software approaches: Some Cam systems will simply take component geometries, nest them and then apply tooling or cutting at the nest level. Such practices save a Cam vendor important improvement overheads and have obvious advantages, but as far as the user is concerned, there is a very important drawback using this technique. Such ideas cannot maintain any facts concerning machining of individual components, which means that any machining facts added or modified on a single component only exists on that single nest and if one needs to nest that same component sometime in the time to come again, that same machining facts will have to be added/modified manually again. It is impossible to use such systems for dependable automation except for most straightforward machining technologies where (and if) interactive modifications to the way a single component is machined are never required.
On the other hand, some other Cam systems will store component's machining facts in a special component file together with component geometry, but a isolate such component file may be required for each engine the user may want the component made on and sometimes even for each distinct angular position of the component on a nest. This still complicates matters quite a bit, as any revision of component geometry or tooling may force modifications of many similar files, which is obviously time intelligent and error prone. However, as the machining facts is stored together with a single component geometry, there is no need for re-entering any of it when a component needs to be nested again.
Paying the price of vastly higher improvement overheads, producers of the best and most capable Cam systems will utilize a compound of both methods to achieve the most flexible and productive engine programming system, while storing geometry and machining facts in a single component file. In such systems, once programmed (either manually or automatically) a component file will store any leading machining facts for any angular position that a single component is desired to be nested at (ie. 0, 90, 180, 270 degrees) and for any number of machines an user may be operating, ready for nesting at any time, at any angle, on any machine, without any human intervention. In this context, it is leading to remember that on obvious machines (ie. Punch Presses) tooling and unloading facts may be very distinct depending on component's angular position on the sheet. Depending on the engine tool selected, to finalize a nest, further machining or modifications (ie. tasteless line cuts, trimming, tool substitution, repositions, lead-in optimization, unloading information, etc.) may be added to the nest by the ideas automatically.
What this means to users is that if a single engine breaks down, all unfinished component orders can immediately be redirected to an additional one engine and new nests created in seconds, whether manually or automatically (ie. A component usually produced on a punch press can be redirected to an additional one one or a laser and vice versa). It also means that components can be nested and produced 'Just-in-Time' on any engine at any time, based on the current engine loading, ideally holding all the machines busy all the time.
Points to remember:
Automation without high reliability may be worse than no automation at all In general, lesser automation means more human resources are needed and the scope for precious mistakes is larger A well implemented reliable, very self-acting and productive Cam ideas can and will save your company, no matter how large or small, a vast number of cash in material utilization, reduction in human resources, engine utilization and other areas
In evaluating a Cam ideas you should also ask:
Is this product dependable (as there is no true automation without reliability and even if not self-acting an unreliable ideas will be losing you money one way or the other). In general, the more maintain personnel vendor has, the less dependable and/or understandable their software will be. So if a salesman tells you that they have large maintain agency to reply your calls, ask yourself a examine why are they expecting your calls in the first place.
Will it offer good maintain for all engine tools we have now and may acquire in the future? Is the software scalable so we can upgrade to maintain more machines, higher functionality or full automation in the future? Does this higher functionality and automation already exist and can it be demonstrated?
Other issues to consider:
Installation - How much time, consultation and effort will be required to setup and satisfactorily implement the Cam ideas you are contemplating to acquire and how much and for how long will it disturb your day-to-day operations? This varies dramatically between distinct products and vendors. Training - How much training is required before the Cnc agency is sufficiently proficient? Is the software intuitive and easy to scholar and use? Software Updates - how difficult is software modernize implementation? Is it as straightforward as inserting a Cd into the drive and waiting a puny while, or will it need maintain from the Cam vendor modernize compatibility - will new updates be fully compatible with all work files, technology databases and settings regardless from which to which version you are updating?
Reliable answers to many of these questions can only be obtained from existing users. So ask for references and talk to them. It may save you a lot of grief in the future.
Conclusion
Software rarely has the same perceived value related with it as hardware - you cannot touch it, for example, so it is very easy to overlook the obvious and negative effects that the right or wrong product can have on your business. whether it's your Mrp ideas that's gone down or your Cam ideas is causing problems it all boils down to the same thing - time and money. Over time visionary companies will all opt for dependable thoroughly self-acting solutions to increase throughput and minimise overheads and waste. While the initial cost of automation has a perceived price and technological barricade a describe of existing practices versus time to come savings can fast identify this as false. Choosing the right Cam ideas to be a dependable and productive unmanned interface between the order and the output is the key to this success.
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