Hitech produces patterns about one third faster with Delcam’s PowerMILL

With Delcam’s PowerMILL CAM system, Hitech Shapes and Designs is keeping its turnaround times low and its service quality high, helping assure success in a very competitive market. The company, a division of Seilkop Industries based in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been building foundry tooling since 1946. During that time, it has evolved from hand-crafted wood and metal patterns to its current CNC capabilities.

With its Delcam software, plus the excellent support from local reseller Design and Software, Hitech Shapes can offer its clients many ways to take time and cost out of foundry production. The company can ship machined prototype moulds within three or four weeks of receiving the customer’s CAD file. A big part of that quicker turnaround is due to PowerMILL.

"Once the file is imported into PowerMILL, it is easy to program the machining in layers to suit the lengths of our cutters,” operator Les Wright said. "Programming in layers allows us to work more efficiently, avoiding cutting air. This saves all kinds of time, which is important to our success.”

"Another of the biggest benefits to me is that PowerMILL provides a tool for cleaning the corners out, going from larger to smaller cutters,” added Mr. Wright. "Our previous software would machine the whole part with the smaller cutter, even though all we really needed to do was work in the corners. PowerMILL automatically keeps the cutter just in the areas where material remains and this prevents a lot of wasted time.” This corner-finishing function alone saves Hitech in the neighbourhood of 25% in programming time and about the same in finish machining time compared to its previous software.

"I had been running CNC machine tools for twenty-plus years as a patternmaker before I moved into programming. The Delcam software was fairly easy to learn, even after being used to another brand,” Mr. Wright said. "With only five half-day classes, I was up and going with it.”

"Another reason why we like PowerMILL is that it is much more efficient for programming high-speed toolpaths,” Mr. Wright continued. The key advantage is that it does not produce any sharp turns but generates arcs into, and out of, the job. This is easier on both the machine and the tooling when moving at high speeds and feeds.”

Once a prototype casting is delivered and evaluated by the customer, its design can be changed and returned to the company. The Delcam software makes its easy for Mr. Wright to overlay the 3D model from the customer and see any changes in the new casting file he gets back. He can select the areas of a pattern that need to be changed, and modify the PowerMILL file so the machine will concentrate only on those areas. This also saves a lot of time in reprogramming and remachining.

The overall result is that the whole pattern-making cycle is much shorter so Hitech can turn around a pattern about one third faster. For example, a pattern that used to take twelve hours to program and machine now takes less than eight hours.