Delcam believes that the latest release of its PowerMILL CAM software offers the quickest-ever return on investment for companies that are looking to replace their existing programming system with faster, more productive software. The company claims that many manufacturers could cover the cost of changing to PowerMILL within three to six months as a result of time and money saved in both programming and machining.
Delcam undertook a series of trials to confirm the added productivity that is possible with the latest release, PowerMILL 8. These showed reductions in the average programming time of 30% and in the average machining time of 15%, when compared to the results obtained with the PowerMILL 7 version. On this basis, a typical sub-contract or toolmaking company, programming and machining an average of 300 different parts per year, could recoup the cost of a PowerMILL licence in just over three months.
For the trials, three components were used to represent typical jobs that would benefit from using the Delcam software; a 0.25 metre square forging die, a 0.5 metre square injection mould cavity and a two metre long press tool. A comprehensive sequence of machining strategies was calculated for each part, including roughing, rest-roughing, semi-finishing and finishing programs, all using realistic stepovers, stepdowns and tolerances. All the calculations were undertaken on a 64 bit Windows XP computer, with 4GB RAM, 2 AMD 2.6 Ghz processors and Quadro FX540 128 Mb graphics card.
Full details on the new PowerMILL release and the trials can be found on the website www.powermill.com/releasecentre. The site also includes a savings calculator so that companies can work out how quickly they could recover their investment in PowerMILL.
::Design World::
Filed Under: Software • CAM, ENGINEERING SOFTWARE