(Plano, TX) and Autodesk. It is also undergoing a fair amount of consolidation, with larger players buying technology through acquisitions including Autodesk’s purchase of Delcam plc (Birmingham, UK) in February, and, more recently, in July, Hexagon AB (Stockholm) acquired Vero Software (Cheltenham, UK) for an undisclosed purchase price.


A key trend is employing CAM toolpath technology that can highly optimize high-speed roughing pro- cesses, dramatically cutting the time taken for the rough cuts on metal components that make up the bulk of machining time. While many CAM software developers have licensed the VoluMill toolpath optimization engine from Celeritive Technologies Inc. (Cave Creek, AZ), others have opted to develop their own, such as Delcam, which has incorporated its own Vortex controlled-engagement toolpath strategy into its CAM pack- ages including PowerMill, PartMaker, and FeatureCAM. Experienced machinists can listen to the cut, or feel the machine to know whether a toolpath has hit the sweet spot when cutting a particular grade of metal. During a recent visit to the machining toolroom of CNC Software Inc. (Tolland, CT), develop- er of Mastercam software, a dem- onstration of CNC’s new Dynamic Motion optimized toolpaths by Karlo Apro, CNC Software’s product de- velopment manager, proved out that point. In tests on 304 stainless, one of the toughest materials to cut, the Dynamic Motion rough-cut the 304


stainless in about 21 minutes, whereas a conven- tional toolpath took an hour and 47 minutes to cut the same part. “That was a very dramatic improvement. We do side-by-side comparisons for what it sounds like,


You Can’t Improve


What You Don’t Measure


Impulse Manufacturing is an Atlanta-area precision metal fabricator that utilizes the latest technologies in sheet metal fabrication, tube processing, and machining. They wanted an automated system to track downtime and effi ciency of each machine in real time. Clay Reiser, Impulse’s Director of Business Development, says “ShopFloorConnect accomplished that and paid for itself in less than three months!”


ShopFloorConnect collects and analyzes effi ciency metrics and OEE from any machine and features capabilities designed for discretemanufacturing, packaging, and food- and-beverage industries. ShopFloorConnect is scalable, and can be quickly implemented into any industrial environment. It comes ready to communicate directly over your network, and includes a powerful report-generator as well as a browser-based viewer that supports the ‘visual factory’ and real time displays.


For additional information about ShopFloorConnect, call us at 800-586-8324 (US and Canada), 978-268-2700, or visit us at www.ShopFloorConnect.com


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