Bill Gibbs is the founder and president of Gibbs and Associates (Moorpark, CA), developer of GibbsCAM software. He is also president of Cimatron North America (Novi, MI) and vice chairman of Cimatron Ltd. (Givat Shmuel, Israel).
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Manufacturing Engineering: What are some key technical trends affecting CAM users today? Bill Gibbs: CAM customers need to reduce costs to be competitive. They need to cut parts faster, spend less time in setup, less time programming, and less time correcting mistakes. They need their tools to last longer. They even need lower electrical bills. Technologies that address all of these are maturing and as a result, acceptance of them in CAM software by customers is increasing. High-efficiency roughing VoluMill, in the latest GibbsCAM release, cuts parts faster, extends tool life, and actually does lower energy usage.
well as prove-out setups. Gibbs is looking ahead to support emerging technologies like metal 3D printing, ensuring that GibbsCAM can handle our customers’ future machine needs as part of an integrated manufacturing strategy. ME: How are medical manufacturers employing CAM sys- tems? Are there specific issues and techniques for machining medical parts? Gibbs: Medical is a booming market segment in many areas of the world. Whenever we look at a specific industry segment of CNC manufacturing, there are many similarities with and also many differences from other industries. Many
“CAM customers need to reduce costs to be competitive. They need to cut parts faster, spend less time in setup, less time programming, and less time correcting mistakes. They need their tools to last longer. They even need lower electrical bills.”
GibbsCAM continues to advance its feature-based automatic programming capabilities to reduce programming time, in- cluding the improved ability to import and use CAD software’s feature data to automate and speed up part programming. Multi-task machines (MTM) continue to be a very popular type of CNC machine with increasing diversity in configura- tions. The opportunity to reduce setups and labor costs is significant. GibbsCAM continues to develop new kinematic support for the latest designs. GibbsCAM’s Machine Simu- lation will catch mistakes before they get to a machine, as
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ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com | May 2013
CNC programming and machining issues are the same for all industries. Some areas specific to the medical industry include the fact that medical parts are small in general, and include materials that are compatible with the human body; stainless steel, titanium, plastics, etc. Surface finish and tolerance requirements can be high. Part volume can range from moderately high, to custom one-off parts for a single individual. High complexity, high value, low-volume parts are a natural for metal 3D Printing, which is making in-roads in personalized parts, including dental. On the high-volume side,
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