Custom Software

Let's face it - commercial CAD & CAM software vendors create products to be mass marketed, and if your needs fit their mold, you're OK. But what do you do when your needs are outside the scope of what they consider to be "normal" requirements?

Whether you problems are this big....	or this small....
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We have a solution for you.

CAMcad has worked with clients that have unique CAM-related needs over the past ten years, helping them automate difficult or otherwise impractical manufacturing engineering processes.

Once we've implemented a solution, they frequently enjoy a significant (in some cases huge) return on their investment because nobody else can compete. In some cases, the technology is so advanced we've been asked not to even discuss it - it becomes our clients' "secret weapon".

Here are a few examples we can talk about:

Aircraft Skin Panel Production - A manufacturer of programmable fixtures for large aircraft skin panels came to us looking for a "postprocessor". After we fully understood their requirements, the solution involved SURFCAM as a graphics engine and an XML-based project management system that allows the programmer to import, reorient, and locate multiple parts on their 165' multi-section fixture table, producing production-ready control data for the fixture and a detailed CAD drawing file for setup.
Aircraft Final Assembly - An aircraft manufacturer approached us to solve a design and machining problem during final assembly. A production worker was taking precision readings of the deliberately designed-in gap between the wings and fuselage, writing the readings on a "shim request form" sent to design engineering. Due to inter-departmental schedule differences, turn-around sometimes took 12~24 hours while an expensive $30m aircraft sat waiting. Our solution included special-purpose software on a PC driving a small CNC milling machine next to the final assembly area, and our system had to be simple enough allow a non-programmer to operate it. Today the production worker directly enters the gap amounts, browses for the wing/fuselage profile, and generates CNC machining data in less than 15 minutes.
Cancer Treatment – Non-Standard Geometry - High Volume production. One of our key accounts produces patient-specific consumables for radiation therapy. Over the past 10 years we've helped this company grow from a 5-man, 1-CNC machine shop to a 50-man, 30-CNC world-leading production facility in an emerging marketplace, turning out 250+ unique and complex machined components each day. The software we provided ranges from a unique web-based interface for radiation clinics whereby each clinic has instant access to job status but can only see their own jobs, to a fully FDA-compliant internal process with 100% audit of every step in the process, to lights-out toolpath generation, machine routing, inspection, and shipping. As such we can truly claim that our automation software is the lifeblood of this highly sophisticated operation.
Database-Driven CAM - A customer approached us that had been out-sourcing production but had decided to purchase a high-performance CNC equipped with multiple pallets containing custom fixtures. Each fixture is able to handle any mixture of the blank sizes that span their entire parts inventory. They needed a web-enabled database-driven system to automatically compute CNC programs in batches from stored profiles for roughly 1,000 unique part numbers.
5ax Laser Drilling - CAD Comparison - A client with a 5-axis CNC laser drilling operation programmed with an existing SURFCAM 5-Axis CAM system needed to import manually-doctored CNC code and compare the "as-is" version from the CNC machine with the original "as-designed" CAD model to determine if a refurbished component was still within acceptable tolerance. Their CNC operators were making slight position adjustments at the machine using a closed-circuit TV using with a magnifying lens for opening up welded tiny cooling holes in airfoil surfaces of jet engine components.

As a result of these projects and many others, CAMcad has learned how to efficiently spec, implement, document, develop, and maintain custom manufacturing applications. Talk is cheap, and you'll never know if your unusual application can be streamlined or automated unless you ask. Who knows, you may have a candidate for a "secret weapon" right under your nose.

If you have an interest or think you may have an automation candidate and want to discuss alternatives, please contact Don McKillop @ x116

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Case studY PDF Files

Custom Software

Case studY
PDF Files