In the beginning, they were unconvinced about iMachining. Shraddha Engineering’s technical staff told the SolidCAM team that the kind of milling that iMachining promised would only be possible on imported CNC machines and tools, not local equipment available in India. Then SolidCAM India convinced them to provide a part to demonstrate the power of iMachining that could be done on their CNC machine with their tools.
The owner of Shraddha Engineering had just received a batch order of 5000 for a simple part. The order was finalized with an understanding that each part would take 4 mins 30 seconds to the machine, which was the best machining time WorkNC could generate. The owner gave the part drawing to the SolidCAM team, and they made the part model & stock in SOLIDWORKS.
Next, SolidCAM India generated the CAM program, which had 2 setups. In the first setup, the part had 1 slot that was 8mm wide and 12mm deep, which SolidCAM used iMachining to rough & finish.
The second setup had a drill of 4mm and profile machining of 3mm. SolidCAM India used a regular drill with the same parameters as WorkNC and 2.5D profile. Using SolidCAM and iMachining, the total machining time was 1 minute and 8 seconds, plus 30 seconds for part change time. In the end, SolidCAM was able to machine each part 3 minutes faster than WorkNC. This meant the company would save 4500 minutes for the 5000 parts order.
The company owner was extremely impressed and requested that SolidCAM perform an additional test on another part. This time, the job used a holding fixture, and the material was NYLON.
SolidCAM India had never cut NYLON before, and they did not know the UTS of the material. They worked under the assumption that the material would be as soft as Aluminum & proceeded. There were 2 toolpaths that were already created with WorkNC, having a diameter of 10 for roughing, and a diameter of 4 for rest roughing. WorkNC would take 10 minutes and 20 minutes respectively for both tools to complete.
SolidCAM programmed both diameters using iMachining and proceeded to cut the part. iMachining was able to finish in 3 minutes and 25 seconds for diameter 10 Roughing, and 6 minutes and 30 seconds for diameter 4. This represented a major time saving for Shraddha Engineering’s owner since this too was a part that was ordered from him in batch quantity.
Completely amazed with the performance of SolidCAM and iMachining, Shraddha Engineering’s owner agreed to finalize a purchase of SolidCAM’s solution instead of WorkNC.
This content was originally published on the SolidCAM website.
