Pictures CAD/CAM Enhances 5 Axis Milling Functionality

Munich, Jan 12th, 2009 – German software house Schott Systeme GmbH will include a number of advanced milling aids for complex 5 axis parts within the latest release of their Pictures by PC 3.4 CAD/CAM software.

Providing significant improvements in reducing the amount of wasted machining moves, the company has both enhanced the method of handling 5 axis rest material for the roughing of complex parts, in addition to providing a far greater level of control over 5 axis finishing operations.

When approaching more complex parts that require roughing from differing directions, with an impeller providing a typical example, Schott Systeme has developed a new approach to the calculation of rest material. The current generation of CAM systems in general tend to calculate rest material in a virtual way, available for measurement within the machining simulation, but not however available as a physical CAD model. Thus providing a more innovative approach, Pictures by PC enables the generation of an actual 3D solid model representing the remaining rest material, continually updated after any number of roughing operations. Immediate advantages to this approach not only include the ability to measure, slice and manipulate the actual rest material as one would any 3D solid part, but in addition this enables further machining operations to use this 3D representation as an accurate means of defining stock material for additional machining.

Such complex parts as the impeller also present unique problems when applying 5 axis finishing operations, specifically the ability to manually control the tool orientation while machining areas that are obscured by other features on the part. In general 5 axis finishing operations tend to take the direction of a surface’s normals as being the actual tooling orientation, however this orientation will often clash with other areas of the component. Here Pictures by PC enables manually created 3D vectors to define the tooling orientation, with the complex toolpaths being interpolated between these multiple vectors. This in effect provides the user will full control over the tool movement and orientation at all times during a 5 axis finishing operation.

For more information, view the demo video at http://www.schott-systeme.com/en/newCAMrestvideo-en.htm

Having developed the same software solutions for over 25 years, Schott Systeme is acknowledged as being one of the founding members of the CAD/CAM and graphics markets. Starting out as one of the very first vector based graphics packages for the PC, their product ‘Pictures by PC’ as the name suggests, has evolved into one of the most mature CAD/CAM and technical documentation products available today. Schott Systeme continues to develop both this ‘Pictures by PC’ solution, in addition to other OEM solutions including the low cost CAD/CAM package isyCAM for ISEL and I-mes CNC machine tools.