OVER the past twenty five years Melbourne-based Dimac Tooling has established itself as the CNC machine tool accessory company by offering a leading edge range of workholding and fixturing solutions for the machining and turning sector.

At Austech 2004 in Sydney from June 1-4, Dimac Tooling will have an extensive range of innovative and productive solutions on display including several new product releases, as well as the traditional product ranges including Kitagawa chucks, Zebra Coolant skimmers and others.

The scheduled new product releases for Austech include new machine vices from Nabaya and the first showing of a range of air clamping modules which includes swing clamps, and toggle clamps.

Dimac will also have a new, flexible work support and clamping range for co-ordinate measuring machines.

A dual gantry, 5-axis profiling, long-bed CNC mill/rout machine will utilize powerful, 7000 rev/min, 70HP gear-driven spindles to simultaneously machine extruded titanium structuresCincinnati Machine announces that it has received an order from RTI Claro, Montreal, Canada, for a dual gantry, 5-axis Wide-Range Profiler. The machines will utilize powerful, 7000 rev/min, 70HP gear-driven spindles to simultaneously machine titanium structures (made from extruded product). The dual gantry configuration will operate on 240ft of X-axis rail with multiple spindles delivering full 5-axis contouring capabilities.

A newly re-designed spindle support housing reduces overall moving mass and will significantly improve Z and B-axes servo response and machining dynamics.

Extensive Finite Element Modeling, a core in-house engineering area of expertise for Cincinnati Machine, was utilized in the re-design of this critical structural, moving element of the machine.

Cincinnati's Wide-Range Profiler product has field-proven, 'best-in-class', multi-spindle, heavy titanium cutting capabilities demonstrated at installations around the globe.

While this machine has dynamic stiffness optimized for aggressive high metal removal rates in titanium and other hard metal alloys, the dual range geared transmission enables very high-volume aluminum and other light alloy 5-axis machining with continuous 70HP available at spindle speeds up to 7,000 rev/min.

RTI Claro, a machining and assembly solutions provider to the aerospace market for more than four decades, chose Cincinnati Machine for its quality machines and proven experience in machining the expensive metal.

Working with parent company, RTI International Metals, a leading supplier of titanium to global aircraft manufacturers, RTI Claro will leverage its new capitol investment to cost-effectively respond to the increasing demand for titanium aircraft parts.

The first gantry is scheduled to ship from Cincinnati Machine's recently expanded manufacturing facility in April 2007.

The second gantry will ship the following July.

* About Cincinnati Machine - Cincinnati Machine designs, builds and integrates advanced manufacturing solutions for the global aerospace, automotive, heavy equipment, energy and general machining markets.

The company's broad machine tool line includes automated composites processing equipment, profilers, routers, large horizontal and vertical machining centers including 5-axis, multi-tasking and cells.

Cincinnati Machine, together with Giddings and Lewis and Cincinnati Automation and Test, comprise Cincinnati Technologies, a unit of MAG industrial automation Systems.

For more information about Cincinnati Machine, please visit www.cinmach.com * About MAG Industrial Automation Systems - MAG Industrial Automation Systems (MAG-IAS), Sterling Heights, MI, is a group of leading machine tool and systems companies serving the durable-goods industry, worldwide, with a large portfolio of highly-recognized and well-respected brands.

With manufacturing operations on five continents, MAG-IAS ranks as a leader in the global metalworking capital equipment market.

The postprocessor is the last software link between an ideal CAD model and a 'real' machined part. To what degree the postprocessor can take advantage of a CNC’s capabilities, and vice versa, determines the number of available programming options and degree of programming difficulty. CNC/postprocessor rapport is particularly important for high speed machining (HSM).

There isn’t a comprehensive, unifying solution that marries all CNCs and postprocessors in such a way. However, Siemens and ICAM have made a step in that direction by developing the CAM-Post Sinumerik 840D postprocessor, which is tailored specifically to the Siemens 840D control. This dedicated postprocessor speeds and simplifies programming, while taking some of the mystery out of accessing the control’s high end HSM features.

“High speed machining, in particular, brings into play a lot of new CNC features that are not necessarily intuitive from the perspective of some CNC users,” says Siemens’ Norman Bleier. “Help in the postprocessor is another step in advancing the CNC concept to address the new challenges of high speed machining.”

The Sinumerik CAM-Post version is an adaptation of ICAM’s universal CAM-Post. It supports 840D control features such as:

* Local coordinate system programming, to allow 2 ½-D cycles to be performed from any tool axis orientation
* Rotating Tool Center Point (RTCP) programming based on the 840D’s transformation orientation (TRAORI) tool-tip programming capability, which is designed to simplify 5-D programming and tool compensation
* Circular Intermediate Point (CIP) and dual curve NURBS interpolation.

According to ICAM’s Malcolm White, this CAM-Post version is also helpful for programming special Cycle832 and Cycle800 commands used by the 840D for high speed machining and coordinate frame transformation. It does this by providing an intuitive dialog box to choose parameters such as exact stop, acceleration pattern, feed forward control, and data compression, and then combines these into a single cycle command.

My second phone call to Tim Rietsma briefly pulled him away from an atypical job for his die/mold shop: he was gluing a sheet of laminate to the top of an office table.


This integrated CAD/CAM package automatically identifies split lines for tube bending dies to eliminate the need to create die surfaces. It can also automatically produce setup sheets for machining the dies.
Though Contour Tool and Engineering moved into its new, 12,000 square-foot building more than a year ago, a large amount of machining work has prevented partners Mike and Tim Rietsma from getting around to making such finishing touches to the facility. That’s a welcome problem for this Zeeland, Michigan, shop to have.

One reason for the shop’s booming business can be attributed to the integrated, knowledge-based 3D CAD/CAM package that has compressed design and manufacturing time for injection molds, stamping dies and tube-bending dies. Mr. Rietsma uses two CAM and two CAD modules from Missler’s TopSolid software platform, which he purchased from Clear-Cut Solutions, located in Addison, Illinois. The integrated platform exchanges native data across all software modules. The benefit of this feature is that it eliminates the need to translate CAD data so that it can be recognized by another vendor’s CAM software. This speeds programming time by eliminating the need to fix geometries. In addition, the 3D visualization of mold and die components and how they interact has been helpful to the shop in demonstrating to customers how a new design will properly function. That makes it an effective sales tool. It also speeds the development of new quotes and allows the company to go after difficult jobs it otherwise might not target.

Faster Programming

Mr. Rietsma first purchased the TopSolid Design CAD module and followed that with TopSolid CAM. TopSolid Mold, the second design module he purchased, offers features specifically tailored for moldmaking. The CAM module recognizes features in the CAD solid model, such as bolts and ejector pins, and automatically generates all the code required to machine features in the mold block for these components.

The company has found TopSolid Mold to be helpful in designing and machining tube-bending dies. The software is able to identify the split line of a tube that might require bends on multiple axes, then automatically create the surfaces for the two die halves.

Similarly, the capabilities offered by TopSolid Design gave the company the confidence to design a proprietary hydraulic tube bending and punching machine. The machine, which produces an automotive component in one setup, uses approximately 80 blocks to create the bends, flats and holes for the component. It replaced a line of stamping dies that required hand loading and part transfer. The machine maintains a constant grip on the tube throughout the process to maintain accurate feature-to-feature tolerances. Solid modeling allowed Contour to make certain components semi-transparent to visualize how they interact and to ensure there was sufficient clearance between the choreographed moving parts. In addition to the blocks, all machine components, including frame and weldments, were created as solid models in TopSolid. Detailed prints were then sent to a fabricator that manufactured those large components. This machine is the most impressive job the shop has undertaken using the software, according to Mr. Rietsma.

Zierick Manufacturing introduced a fully automatic CNC insertion system. Measuring 3' x 3' x 2' high, the bench top Model 9700 XY Positioning System is suitable for production lines and the needs of contract manufacturers. Its modular tooling is said to reduce downtime between terminal changeovers.

The 9700 XY combines a terminal insertion machine with a dual-axis positioning system to achieve high-speed, repeatable insertions through a set of programmed coordinates. User interface is through a series of menus presented to the operator using touchscreen controls. Programming can be done manually, or specific data points can be downloaded to the PLC directly with an optional data connection kit. The unit can store 99 programs with 150 position points each — all of which can be modified, deleted or added during the operation. The self-contained positioning and insertion unit can check the validity of any series of taught insertion points automatically.