How to choose computer-aided manufacturing CAM software for CNC machining system

With the continuous advancement of science and technology, computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software has become more and more widely used in numerical control processing. In CNC machining, the performance of CAM software will directly affect the machining operations, machining quality and production efficiency of the parts. Therefore, the choice of CAM software is a very important task in CNC machining, and it must be carried out cautiously.

There are many common CAM software, such as Pro/ENGINEER (Pro/E), Uni-graphics (UG), MasterCAM and so on. The basic principle to follow when choosing these software should be to select the appropriate software according to your needs. Under normal circumstances, first of all, combined with the development direction of the existing products and products of the enterprise, it is clear what problems should be solved at the current stage of CNC machining, combined with future developments, what problems should be solved and then analyzed, and then analyze the functional characteristics of the selected CAM software. How to solve the above problems, can meet the production needs. Specifically, based on in-depth analysis of the characteristics of the part, the process decision of the machining, the generated tool path information file, and the requirements of the NC machining code generated by the post-processing, etc., compare the performance characteristics of the existing different software. , choose the most suitable CAM software.

First, the basic function analysis of CAM software

The most basic functions of CAM software are pre-processing and post-processing.

Pre-processing

System data input interface

Before you can numerically program a part, you must first obtain the model information of the part. Many CAM softwares have their own CAM modeling system, which can directly design parts and design, and then design the process until NC programming. However, in most cases, the modeling engineer and the processing design engineer may use different CAM software, and the CAM software may read the design results completed by other CAM software, which requires the data input interface of the CAM software to be correctly read. Take the output data of many common CAM software.

Most CAM software can provide data input interfaces in various formats, such as IGES, DXF, STL, SAT and other general interfaces, and some also have special interfaces for some famous CAM software such as Pro/E, UG, CAYIA. However, the data format of the "Specialization" of different CAM software is different, and the degree of support is also different. Therefore, it is best to select several representative parts and experiment with the data format supported by CAM software to check whether it can be read correctly. Data information.

Second, the processing support and other process adaptability

The quality of the processing is closely related to the support of the CAM software for the processing technology. For example, the way of cutting has a great relationship with the quality of the machined surface. In the milling process, the simple linear reciprocating cutting is performed, and the surface quality can be processed when the plane profile is machined. However, if the surface profile is machined, it is necessary to perform a circular cutting along the contour line to achieve a high surface quality. Therefore, for different parts or different parts of the same part, different contour shapes require different ways of walking. In addition to the way of the knife, it is also necessary to pay attention to whether the software provides over-cut protection, interference check of the arbor, and even auxiliary functions such as simulation expression of the machining process.

Post processing

Post-processing is an important part of CNC machining. The main task is to convert the tool path and tool information file generated by the CAM software pre-processing into a CNC code file of a specific format acceptable to a specific machine controller. .

Tool path files do not directly drive the machine because different machine controls have different requirements for program formats and instructions. Different machines, even if they are processed the same, have different codes and formats. Only by combining the NC machine program that the machine can recognize in the format required by the specific machine tool can the machine be driven. This requires the CAM software to provide post processing for a variety of different machine tools, and to have a customized post processing function so that the user can directly Edit and modify existing post-processing files.

After the post processing, the obtained NC code needs to be transferred to the CNC machine tool to guide the machine tool for processing. In the past, the RS232 interface was used for data transmission, which requires special software support. Many CAM softwares now have this data transmission function.