Pictures CAD/CAM Enhances 5-Axis Milling Functionality

By DE Editors

Schott Systeme GmbH (Munich, Germany) is offering a number of advanced milling aids for complex 5-axis parts with the latest release of its Pictures by PC 3.4 CAD/CAM software.

By reducing the amount of wasted machining moves, the company has enhanced the method of handling 5-axis rest material for the roughing of complex parts and provides more control over 5-axis finishing operations.

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 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.

Complex parts present 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 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 Schott Systeme.

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