DP Technology Corp. Releases ESPRIT 2011 CAM Software

By DE Editors

DP Technology Corp. has announced the release of ESPRIT 2011. Upgrades provide new productivity-increasing tools that focus on both the immediate needs of ESPRIT’s current users and the long- term direction of the manufacturing community. 

Included in ESPRIT 2011 are a number of programming technologies for all machining disciplines — including milling, turning, wire EDM, multitasking mill-turn, and high-speed 3- and 5-axis — in addition to system-wide enhancements and new analysis tools. ESPRIT 2011 is designed to run on both the Microsoft Windows 7 and Vista operating systems.

New to ESPRIT 2011 are a series of analysis tools — the zebra, porcupine, heat map and toolpath analysis commands — that provide graphic displays for the inspection of solid models and ease in programming.

The zebra command simulates the reflection of long strips of light on a shiny surface, making it easy to spot wrinkles or defects in a surface. The striped display also makes it easier to verify that two adjacent faces are in contact, are tangent, or have continuous curvature. If stripes smoothly connect from one face to another, elements are tangent. The porcupine command displays normal vectors on faces and surfaces to aid in the visualization of changes in part curvature, which assists with the selection of ideal machining strategies. The heat map command displays surfaces rendered in different colors according to the local radius of curvature. The toolpath analysis command traces the position of the tool along a selected toolpath to aid in evaluating toolpath smoothness and to examine the quality of point distribution.

Pocketing and trochoidal pocketing have also been enhanced in ESPRIT 2011 to recognize feature properties for top blends, bottom blends and walls with different tapers. ESPRIT 2011 now finds the contact point with the feature according to the blend information. If a pocket contains multiple sub-pockets with different tapers and multiple islands with different tapers,  users can now machine those pockets with one operation.

Additionally, open-pocket toolpath now supports wrap pocketing, open islands and the “extra moves” parameter. 

Numerous enhancements have also been made to 3-and-5-axis cycles. Among these upgrades is the new tangent pass extension toolpath option,  which allows users to apply a tangent extension at the two extremities of open passes. This new option has been added to parallel planes, Z-level and between-curves finishing, as well as to 5-axis composite milling. 

SolidTurn drilling has been enhanced in ESPRIT 2011 with the addition of “Full Clearance” as an option for “Return Plane.” The advantage of adding the “Full Clearance” option to the drilling cycle is that the user can set and view the distance on the technology page. To better support Swiss-style turning, a new lead-out option, called “Edge Break,” has also been added to ESPRIT 2011.

For more information, visit DP Technology.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.