Delcam’s Boris to be special guest at Hermle Open House

Delcam’s friendly spider, Boris, will be a special guest at the Hermle Open House to be held at the company’s headquarters is Gosheim from 21st to 24th April. Boris will be machined on one of the new five-axis machining centres to be demonstrated during the event.

This year, Boris will celebrate 25 years as the Delcam mascot. The first Boris was created at Cambridge University as a rendered image by technician Jon Hunwick and research student Gavin Millar. Jon then worked out how to machine and assemble the legs and body. He took the metal Boris to one of the first CADCAM exhibitions in London. There, Delcam’s then Managing Director, Hugh Humphreys, decided to take him back to Birmingham to become the company mascot. He was given the name Boris because of the song by English band The Who, "Boris the Spider.”

The version at the Hermle Open House has been programmed using the new 64-bit version of Delcam’s PowerMILL CAM software, the 2010 release. 64-bit technology removes the memory limitations of 32-bit computers so allowing more efficient toolpath generation, especially for companies machining large or complex parts.

The 2010 release also continues to improve user productivity by extending the application of the latest background-processing and multi-threading technologies available in recent hardware. The combination of these two developments is estimated to reduce calculation times by up to 25%, although this will depend on the size and complexity of the part.

PowerMILL 2010 also includes more than 50 other major enhancements. This is the largest number in a single release for over five years and reflects the continued high levels of investment in product development at Delcam. These improvements allow faster and easier generation of highly-efficient toolpaths for three- through five-axis milling.