QUESTION: Any industry trends you noticed this year?
MICHAEL: Recent trends include additive manufacturing, which allows for building up of metal materials for machining. It includes providing surface heat treating with laser- and closed-loop systems for control of melt material.
QUESTION: Any others?
MICHAEL: Siemens NX’s exclusive CAD-CAM system that can program for additive manufacturing in a joint venture with DMG Mori. The quality lands somewhere between casting and forging quality, depending on material. It can blend and ramp material to provide inexpensive core material while allowing for layers on the outside for corrosion or heat resistance. The advantage of blending and ramping materials is a reduction in part stress and cost.
QUESTION: What caught your eye?
MICHAEL: Siemens NX continues to have seamless integration with Siemens 840D controls. Out of the box posts- or standard-post from Siemens NX for 840D controls allows for use of all advanced control functions and full virtual machine G-code simulation, which prevents real machine crashes. The result of that is they get a better return for investment on their machine, getting full use of their machines capabilities.
QUESTION: What’s this mean for users?
MICHAEL: Siemens NX and Applied CAx can help customers get the full value out of their machine by giving customers access to all machine features. Allowing for high surface quality, ease of programming rotational 3+2, and full 5-axis programming without having to worry about mounting parts in relation to the rotation center.
QUESTION: Anything else catch your eye?
MICHAEL: The DMG Mori CELOS control caught my eye. The CELOS interface lays over the top of the Siemens 840D control on the DMU 50. It’s a front end interface that brings a lot of info to the machine operator, allowing for easy viewing of project documents (PDFs, etc), machine performance, and tool / setup information. The screen layout is also user customizable.
There were a lot of great machines. The linear ultra-high-speed machines are always fun to watch. With rapid speeds almost 2X faster than other machines at 3200 inches per minute, such as the DMU 60 eVo / linear.
QUESTION: Great stuff, thanks. Was the floor shiny?
MICHAEL: Lol yes incredibly shiny! Not sure how they did it, at one point it was so shiny it was distracting.
Thanks to DMG Mori for the event and to Michael Grant for taking the time out to speak with Applied CAx!