CAMWorks 2007 Pleasantly Surprised

Discussion in 'SolidWorks' started by brewertr, Oct 16, 2006.

  1. brewertr

    brewertr Guest

    A Engineer friend decided to purchase some surplus CNC machinery and
    open up a Design and Prototype Shop. He also purchased a new seat of
    CAMWorks so he could run CAM directly from SolidWorks. He felt this was
    best for his situation since he has never programmed, set up or
    operated a CNC before.

    He brought me in to show him how to set up his CNC machinery and I did.
    He is a quick learner so towards the end of the training we had some
    time and decided to try out CAMWorks, I wasn't expecting much. I have
    never used CAMWorks and He hadn't had any training on it at that point.
    He used a generic post processor and tool library because this was
    right out of the box. The custom post processors he purchased will be
    written by the VAR after his one on one VAR CAMWorks training is
    complete and same for the Machine Specific Tool Libraries.

    First try out of the box CAMWorks feature recognition worked with only
    two small changes due to the use of the generic tool library were
    needed. My friend made a solid and then used CAMWorks to do everything
    up to and including generating the G-Code and CAMWorks was very fast.
    The part had Simple Rough and Finish Milling, Rough and Finish
    Pocketing as well as Spot Drilling, Drilling & Tapping at two different
    levels. Choosing two different tools and making the changes in CAMWorks
    was simple and he managed to make the changes and generated the machine
    G-Code within seconds.

    I reviewed and edited the generated code and he set up and machined the
    part which came out perfectly. My friends question about the generated
    G-Code was simple, "would it run properly without editing?" which I
    responded "Yes." Depth of Cut, Feeds and Speeds for the material were
    all good. What I edited in the original generated code was to add some
    safety's and format the tool changes basically I did what the custom
    post processor would do however the original generic G-Code would have
    run without editing.

    I was skeptical of CAMWorks, its Feature Recognition and all the other
    Buzzwords associated with CAM packages today but DANG it worked. The
    Solid was drawn in SolidWorks where he is an expert and using CAMWorks
    for the first time he successfully generated CNC G-Code having NEVER
    done it before. Then without any intervention he successfully set up
    and machined the sample part.

    Can't wait to see how CAMWorks functions when the Custom Post Processor
    and Machine Tool Library are complete, should be amazing.

    One of the machines is a Gang Tool Lathe so I am curious how well
    CAMWorks handles a Gang Tool.

    Tom
     
    brewertr, Oct 16, 2006
    #1
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