Engineering in 2010
May 6, 2010, 4:02 pm
Author: Michael Haber
Due to our involvement with the company NC Computer Systems in Melbourne and their agents in other parts of Australia like Perth it gives us an opportunity to appreciate what our customers need.
Also being in this market for more then 30 years gave us an opportunity to observe and also participate in the evolution of this filed and the status of the manufacturing industry here and trends on the world scale.
I believe the driving force behind all this evolution has been a dream of a man to be able to make whatever he imagines at a touch of a button, or a wave of a magic wand. The first machine which was created to follow instruction from a paper tape to drill holes at given coordinates must have seemed like a magic to a man who previously had to mark the positions and then carefully position the drill over the material to do the drilling.
Our software which we have offered to these customers started in the beginning on 8 bit computers like Apple IIe or Commodore 64. In those days objective was to help with NC programming. Prior to theses NC machines were programmed by punching 1” wide paper tapes full of holes which represented the 8bit code.
These tapes were the memory where the program was saved and means of communicating it to the machine.
It was amazing how this idea caught on in Australia, and of course in many other parts of the world. Main issue with the NC machines were it saved labour, giving accurate and consistent results. Suddenly there were many small companies springing up, often consisting of husband and wife and maybe one employee. Wife did look after the books and husband did programming and general maintenance and materials ordering, while employee did operate the machine, by feeding in the material and removing the finished product. Investment in the NC machine and programming system was quickly paid off by having reliable and accurate production.
We have lead the evolution from NC and CAM to CAD/CAM where we were the first company to offer more sophisticated software where programmer could define the geometry of the object and software did all the calculations to produce the NC code for making that component. Prior to that programmer had to do all the trigonometry calculation to define tediously all the moves of the NC machine. Since CAD packages did not exist then, there was an approach to define the geometry in a special language called APT. By this finished shape and also the raw material shape could be defined and after selecting the strategy of machining, our software did the rest. We had quite a few visitors, even from Japan marvelling how we were running such sophisticated software on simple 8bit Apple IIe computer with no hard disk, only 2 - 51/4” floppy disks.
Today we have much more sophisticated software of programming CNC machine, like Camworks or Metacam. We offer to program all the traditional machines like lathe, milling, punching, flame cutting machines or more advanced modern machines like 5 axis milling or combination lathe with live milling tools or 5 axis lasers or 4 EDM (wire cutting) machines. Our modern software now links to or is integral part of what is today the latest in 3D CAD software which is solid modelling software like Solidworks or Alibre
These solid modeling software packages have a number of powerful properties, which bring them that much close to the magic wand we desire. One of the first important features is called 'parametric' 3D modeling. That means that at any stage you can change dimensions and part gets modified automatically. Traditional CAD packages could not do that. There you simply had to edit tediously geometry which defined the shape.
Another important factor in modern 3D CAD software is relations you assign to the parts, with respect to each other, how they fit together. We can call this 'virtual engineering' because the resulting model is truly representing real item in many aspects, but in addition, if the design is correctly defied then you can have
a design which by few driving dimensions whole design will change in seconds and also each part is updated.
This type of modern 3D CAD/CAM lets you explore the variations to the design, go to the beginning of its creation by scrolling through the features of the design and make changes where necessary and observe the results and how the whole lot gets modified. Integral CAM lets you do then full simulation of the machining process before you make the part to avoid any mistakes. It is truly the magic wand we so much desire.
It lets you explore alternative possibilities and correct mistakes before making real part.
It lets you play god in the realms of your own creation, you have full control over it.
It lets you travel in time of its existence, go to the beginning and change it if required.
At a touch of a button you produce the part, making the real part from the virtual one.
