Vero’s MACH Live Demo Machining, Sales Leads, And Latest Releases

Live machining demonstrations and almost 200 strong sales leads were the highlights for Vero Software at the recent UK MACH exhibition. The show was also the first opportunity for manufacturers to see the new and enhanced features in the latest releases of four of Vero’s CAD/CAM solutions.

Coinciding with the issue of EDGECAM, VISI and WORKNC, the exhibition was the perfect showcase for a preview of their features which improve cycle times and product quality. The 2016 release of the sheet metal CAD/CAM software, RADAN, was also on show.

In addition, a number of machine tool companies held live machining demonstrations on their own stands, using EDGECAM and WORKNC. DMG Mori UK programmed a 3+2 DMU ecoMill 50, with WORKNC for machining the chin strap for an aluminium fighter pilot head and helmet. And a component created specially to demonstrate EDGECAM’s strategies, namely Waveform Roughing, attracted considerable attention.

DMG Mori UK’s Engineering Manager Andrew Beckett says visitors were particularly impressed with the trochoidal milling and fast material removal rate. The part was designed for The Modern Art Of Milling…a local partnership between DMG Mori, EDGECAM and Sandvik. “It demonstrates the ease of machining pockets, outside milling, face milling, and island milling with pockets. The partnership works very well because it shows our machine tool, the EDGECAM CAD/CAM software used to generate the toolpath, and Sandvik’s cutting tools.”

EDGECAM was also used to drive live machining demonstrations on the Mazak, Hurco, Engineering Technology Group (Nakamura Tome), Romi, Yeovil Machine Tools, and Axminster stands.

Partnering its parent company, Hexagon, at the exhibition Vero’s on screen demonstrations of the latest features in the four brands generated nearly 200 strong sales leads. Visitors to the joint stand saw how EDGECAM users will benefit from over 30 new and enhanced items of CAD and CAM functionality, including super-fast file loading for large assemblies, and auto indexing when moving between features on different planes. A number of machining cycles have been enhanced, including the ability to support a number of sharp corner profiling methods such as loop, break-corner and chamfer, with significantly reduced code output.

For turning, the rough grooving cycle has been improved to add control for managing ‘nibbles’ on corner radii by adding or removing intermediate cuts.

VISI 2016 R2 represents another release with major CAM improvements covering both 2D and 3D milling routines. And VISI Mould developments include cooling channel management, with support for solid groups, CAD transformations and updated catalogue components such as plugs, connectors and baffles.

Additional enhancements include a new tool to produce lubrication grooves, and a re-written database tool to manage and edit the 3D standard element libraries.

WORKNC 2016 benefits from Vero’s practice of sharing technology between brands…introducing Waveform Roughing into the latest release. And Auto 5 technology is now available as a standard module, enabling operators to automatically generate 5-axis toolpaths based on existing 3-axis toolpaths, while also taking into consideration the kinematics of the predefined 5-axis CNC machine.  Engineers can convert 3-axis and 3+2-axis toolpaths into simultaneous 5-axis paths.

As with all Vero products, user experience is a constant focus, and visitors to the stand saw how it is even easier to select different commands in the graphical user interface, thanks to graphic symbols representing calculated operations.

Sheet metal workers were particularly impressed with RADAN 2016’s new interactive auto-tooling concept which allows them to specify which areas of the parts and nest to automatically tool, including individual variations of the parameters such as the settings for a complicated aperture. And a new tool is now available, called Radmanager, providing users with a simple way of entering their customers’ order data and turning it into nest projects within RADAN.
 
RADAN Product Manager Olaf Körner says: “MACH was the perfect setting for us to demonstrate how RADAN is actually a whole suite of connected products. For example, there’s a major connection between 3D in CAD/CAM and the Radbend press brake software. When manufacturers unfold a model they need to know how the bend process will be affected further down the production line.”