January 10, 2018

Another great SmartCAM release hits the streets

Welcome back once again to the SmartCAMcnc blog J

Apologies, it’s been a while.

That’s entirely down to me,
I’ve been fully occupied with release material work.

That’s a subtle way of letting you know that a new release of our CNC programming software has recently become available, SmartCAM Version 2018.

As is our custom, an overview of the release content can be found on our website here

But here is a fast run-through of What’s New:


New: Adaptive Roughing Toolpaths

The benefits of Adaptive Rouging toolpaths are based upon impeccably robust logic:

Always-tangential toolpath and a Consistent Cut Volume mean that there are no shock loads due to corners or burying the cutter deep into stock.

User control over maximum widths of cut / the use of small widths of cut mean that small chips are produced, which are more easily and quickly removed from the cutter taking heat away with them.

Tool life is increased.

No shock loading and small widths of cut / chips mean that you can ramp up High Speed Milling speeds and feeds and can use deeper depths of cut, often using the maximum cutter flute length. Faster material removal results in reduced cycle times.







We rate our feeds

Users of SmartCAM come to know that they have the ability to model toolpath to their precise, unique requirements.

The level of control has always included the not unimportant detail of feed rate.

But feed rate control just got better.

Our website includes detail on the changes, but a summary is:

-   Additional Milling feed rate type settings

Property change the Feed Entity type of any individual toolpath element or group of toolpath elements

-    Property change Feed Override. Override the planned feed rate for any toolpath element or group of toolpath elements

These detailed changes mean that feed rate control in SmartCAM is better than ever before.




Verification

We totally re-wrote our SmartCAM Toolpath Verification system for the previous release. We’ve added even more functionality in Version 2018.

Users of SmartCAM Wire EDM and Advanced Fabrication products will be pleased to know that the new Verification has now been rolled out to those products. Verification and slug removal are greatly improved for those applications.

We also added a few more controls that benefit the everyday use of SmartCAM and SmartCAM Verification, such as an ability to pause Verification when a collision is encountered, to mention just one.





There’s more

Those three themes summarise the primary developments we offer with SmartCAM Version 2018, but ‘other highlights’ of the release are:

-         Tool preview. The display of tool graphics / custom tool graphics in the job planner and in the Knowledge Based Machining library

-         Match Element. A new ability to match existing element properties onto  elements selected in the active group.

-         C Axis Table Indexing. For those that want or need it, an ability to output CNC code that indexes C into position and applies XYZ machining at that orientation.

-         Verification Revolved Stock. When working from wireframe stock, the stock model can be created by revolving a closed or open profile around the current X-axis.

-   New List View style option. Very much a CAD- and CAM-data display mode option that clearly separates CAD geometry from Toolpath model content.


Those last few will I'm sure be most meaningful to existing users of SmartCAM.

If you don’t yet know SmartCAM then you really ought to find out more about us and about our favorite CAM solution.

That short list contains a couple of the changes we have made to this release that I personally like and rate.


Hey, that’s enough from me for the time being. I hope I have painted a picture of what is another great release of SmartCAM, even though I do say so myself.


Take care.
Have a great day / evening / weekend.

Talk CAM with us. We're at:
+1 (541) 344-4563



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