CAMWorks Milling

Why Spend Hours Programming Complex Parts?

Getting products to market faster, more efficiently and within budget is essential in today's machine shop environment. CAMWorks incorporates Machining Intelligence that automates the generation of toolpaths based on a user-defined technology database. Hours of complex programming time are eliminated by using Automatic Feature Recognition (AFR) to automatically define machinable features, while the technology database defines operations to automatically generate accurate toolpaths quickly.

2½ Axis Milling

2½ Axis Milling includes automatic roughing, finishing, thread milling, face milling and single point (drilling, boring, reaming, tapping) cycles to machine prismatic features.

• Machining algorithms use the latest toolpath and gouge protection methods.
• Cutting cycles provide fast, error-free toolpaths using ball, flat end mill, taper, corner round, thread mill and hog nose tools.

3 Axis Milling

CAMWorks 3 Axis cycles are developed for speed, accuracy and efficient memory usage. Simple and complex parts can be cut quickly and accurately with a high quality toolpath.

Some of the features are below.

• All 3 Axis Cutting Cycles:
  • Can be modified to stay contained within an area or to avoid an area.
  • Provide interactive and automatic methods for defining contain and avoid areas.
  • Have retract options to reduce travel distance between retract and reentry moves.
  • Can generate high-speed toolpaths with no sharp corners.
  • Can generate toolpaths with ball, flat, hog nose, tapered ball, tapered flat, or tapered hog nose tools.
  • Allow user defined start and end Z depths.
  • Can have separate XY and Z stock allowances.
  • Allow contain and avoid areas to be defined with different tool side conditions for On, Upto and Past.
  • Allow contain and avoid areas to have multiple closed areas.
  • Allow avoid areas to be defined such that the tool will machine over the avoid area.

  
   

• All 3 axis cycles except Area Clearance and Flat Area support an option to restrict the toolpath areas to a given slope and provide options for up and down milling.
• Area Clearance and Z-Level support an option to avoid small pockets.
• The Pattern Project cycle Slice pattern includes options for cross machining.
• All 3 Axis milling operations support rest or leftover machining. Rest machining is used to reduce air cutting by restricting toolpaths to areas within the feature that have not been machined previously.
• The Constant Stepover cycle removes material by maintaining a constant user-defined stepover relative to the surface. This cycle generates a semi-finish or finish toolpath with a true constant stepover regardless of the slope being machined.
• The Curve Project cycle removes material by projecting 2.5 Axis Engrave or Curve features on the 3 axis feature. CAMWorks can calculate a single pass or multiple passes for engraving.
• The Flat Area cycle uses a roughing pattern to remove material on flat faces.

Note: The features and functions described above for 3 Axis Milling do not apply to 3 Axis Rough and 3 Axis Finish cycles. These cycles use older technology and will be discontinued in a future release.

Assembly Mode

CAMWorks leverages the power and flexibility of SolidWorks Assembly mode to support NC programming of multiple parts for production machining and to more accurately represent the machining environment.

Some of the key benefits include:

• The entire machining environment can be modeled including machine components, parts, stock, clamps, and fixtures. As much or as little detail as desired can be modeled in the SolidWorks assembly document.
• Multiple copies of a part can be positioned in the assembly document and machined with CAMWorks.
• The same part can be machined with multiple different machine tools.
• Multiple SolidWorks configurations can be machined in one assembly document.
• Ability to split instances of the same part and generate separate features and operations.

4/5 Axis Indexing

CAMWorks offers advanced 3 plus 2 machining support, which gives you the ability to machine various faces of a part, while the software automatically establishes index moves. Multiple machine configurations are supported including rotary tables; rotating and tilting tables; 5-axis rotating and tilting heads; and horizontal machining centers.

Setup for 4th or 5th axis indexing is as simple as inserting a SolidWorks Axis and picking a 0 degree face.  Both 2 Axis and 3 Axis machining cycles can be used to machine multi-faced parts or multiple parts. Unique stock shapes can be defined to reduce "air cutting." Significant time savings are achieved by optimizing machining sequences by tool number and index position.

CAMWorks simulation displays all the indexing moves for accurate process simulation and collision checking.

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