3-Axis Milling

Extended Surface Modeling Capabilities

Though more and more parts files are being provided in solid model format, surfaces still play a key part in their definition and surface modeling for manufacturing is still a very important capability. SolidSurfacer provides extended surface modeling capabilities to handle surface creation or modification. And GibbsCAM’s signature ease-of-use ensures that its powerful surface modeling functionality is easy to use.

Advanced 3D with High-Speed Machining (HSM)

Advanced 3D with High Speed Machining expands the 3D surface and solid body machining of SolidSurfacer in many ways. This includes new types of finishing processes, support for 3D Material Only toolpath, enhanced entry/exit control, the ability to directly machine Faceted bodies including imported STL files, automatic Core/Cavity detection for inside-out or outside-in determination, operation splitting for tool wear and for optimal length out of holder, automatic filleting of a surface to avoid sharp concave corners and it supports batch toolpath generation.

Draft

Often parts have vertical walls that make them difficult to remove from molds without sliders. With SolidSurfacer, you can apply an amount of draft slightly angling vertical walls. You won’t get stuck with SolidSurfacer’s breadth of capabilities.

Automatic Parting Line Generation

Mold halves need to be separated at the extents of the part to ensure that the part can be readily removed. Manually determining where the parting line should be can be a very tedious process. With SolidSurfacer, you can automatically generate the correct parting line and then use it to easily divide the mold halves.

Extract/Heal Features (For Core/Cavity or Electrodes)

Often parts include minor features that get in the way when generating toolpath. These features can be suppressed using SolidSurfacer’s extract/heal feature capability, which removes the feature’s geometry and heals the surrounding area. The solid, which is generated from the suppressed feature, can also be used to create cores or electrodes.

Multiple Offsets

There are different types of surfaces to consider when machining – the surface that is actually being machined, the part surfaces not being machined, and any surfaces associated with fixtures. SolidSurfacer allows you to specify the offset, or how closely the tool comes, for each of these surfaces types. Just another example how with SolidSurfacer, you’re in complete control when generating toolpath.

3-Axis Multi-Surface Machining

Today’s parts include a variety of forms and surfaces. Applying toolpath across multiple surfaces or over an entire solid is a key machining capability in addition to pocketing and profiling. SolidSurfacer allows you to easily create gouge-free, 3-axis toolpath using a variety of machining styles, such as lace cut and zig-zag. You have complete control over cut parameters like direction, orientation, step-over amount, and depth. With SolidSurfacer, machining multiple surfaces is quick and easy.

3D Projection Machining

Sometimes you want to have direct control of the toolpath over multiple surfaces. You generate the toolpath you want and then you project it onto the surfaces to be machined. The source for the toolpath geometry can be just about anything, including text. SolidSurfacer provides a powerful capability that allows you to project geometry onto surfaces generating final toolpath geometry.

Free-form Geometry Creation

Whether you start with imported geometry or need to create your own geometry, GibbsCAM Production Milling's free-from geometry capabilities provide a powerful means to create and edit geometry for machining. GibbsCAM's graphical user interface infers what operations you want to perform based on the elements selection dramatically streamlining interactions with the system. Auto-chaining eliminates the need to continually stop the work flow to trim and connect geometry.

Graphical Tool Definition

GibbsCAM Production Milling's graphical user interface to define tools shows the user key dimensions to allow easy and error-free tooling creation. The system supports a wide variety of predefined tool types as well as user-defined form tools.

Multi-Process Programming

GibbsCAM Production Milling allows you to select geometry once and to apply multiple machining operations, such as a series of rough, semi-rough, finish passes, to it all at one time. The resulting processes are associated to each other as well as the original geometry allowing updates to be easily accommodated.

Knowledge-Based Programming

GibbsCAM Production Milling allows processes (including Multi-Process Processes) and associated tooling to be saved and re-used between programs. A knowledge base library of process/tooling can be developed from a shop's best machining practices improving programming efficiency, program consistency and part quality.

Full 2/2.5-Axis Programming

GibbsCAM Production Milling provides a full range of functionality for defining processes for efficiently machining 2- and 2.5-axis parts from geometry.

Advanced Pocketing Routines

GibbsCAM Production Milling's advanced pocketing routines supports machining open-sided pockets as well pilot and/or auto pocket corner drill pockets with unlimited islands or bosses. You can specify whether or not you want to machine pockets breadth first or depth first. Pocketing machining strategies supported include: Auto Plunge, User Plunge, Ramp, Periphery Ramp and Helix.

Boring/Drilling Sub-Routines

GibbsCAM Production Milling supports a wide range of Boring (bore, fine bore, backbore) and Drilling sub-routines ensuring that hole making operations are as efficient as possible.

Entry-Level Solids Support

Solid models are becoming more and more common in manufacturing as a source data type. Solid models provide more accurate geometry than other formats reducing errors. GibbsCAM Solids Import is the base technology upon which GibbsCAM’s range of solids-based options is built on. If you are ready to step-up to solids, Solids Import provides basic support for machining solid models in an easy-to-use environment. Easing into solids was never easier.

Native Parasolid Support

Solid models are available in a wide variety of formats, from industry standards like STEP, to CAD system specific formats, to kernel modeler formats. Support for Parasolid files, a kernel modeler format widely used by numerous popular CAD systems, such as Solid Edge and SolidWorks, is provided with GibbsCAM Solids Import. Sharing a common modeling kernel ensures that CAD models in Parasolid format can be directly read into GibbsCAM, viewed and manipulated. Build your solids-based technology on a solid foundation.

Solid Viewing

Solid models provide a more complete representation than wireframe or surface models which allows them to be more accurately rendered. GibbsCAM Solids Import provides a variety of display modes to display solids allowing you to chose which you prefer given what you’re doing. GibbsCAM innovative virtual track ball allows you to dynamically orient your view, while also providing quick access to standard views. Get a solid view on what you’re machining.

Extract Geometry from Solids

Solid models contain both wireframe and surface geometry providing you with the richest amount of geometric data. And solid models ensure accurate edge geometry between surfaces. With GibbsCAM Solids Import, you can extract a solid model’s wireframe geometry, which corresponds to the edges of a part, and directly machine from it. Or if necessary, you can modify the extracted geometry before machining it. Take advantage of solid model accuracy.

Slice Solids

Solid models contain both wireframe and surface geometry providing you with the richest amount of geometric data. Sometimes though, where you want to machine is not necessarily defined by an existing edge. GibbsCAM Solids Import allows you to generate wireframe geometry by cutting the solid with a plane. The resulting geometry can then be machined or further manipulated. Get solid capability built on solids technology.

Foundation for Solids-Based Options

Solids introduce a whole new range of capabilities from data exchange, to visualization, to machining, to verification. With GibbsCAM Solids Import you have the option to seamlessly add additional capabilities further expanding your solids-based technology. Read in CAD data in other solid formats, such as this ACIS file, or CATIA V4 or V5, Pro/ENGINEER, and STEP AP203 or AP214. Grow at your own pace while protecting your investment.

Powerful Solid Modeling

Whether you import solid models from a CAD system, create your own from scratch, or modify an imported solid to create a manufacturable version, GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids provides a full range of solid modeling functionality with advanced functionality like history trees to support you.vAnd GibbsCAM's industry leading ease-of-use makes working with solids straight forward and understandable. With GibbsCAM 2.5D Solid's powerful solid modeling tools, you'll be able to take full advantage of solid modeling technology.

Import and Repair Surface Models

Even with the transition to solids, CAD systems are still generating surface models that need to be imported and machined. With GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids you can read in surface models and then repair any problems you encounter with a broad range of surface modeling tools. You can also create your own surfaces for machining. If you still work with surface models, GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids can still cut your jobs and provide a great migration path to solids-based machining.

Automatic Solidification

With GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids, you don’t have to start with solid models to take advantage of solids-based machining. Surface models, whether imported or created, can be automatically stitched together to create solid models which can then be further modified using GibbsCAM's solid modeling tools or machined directly. GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids provides you with the tools you need to transition from surface-based to solids-based CAM.

Directly Machine 2.5D Solids

Not only do solid models provide considerable advantages during design, but solid models also have many advantages during machining. GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids' machining functionalities were developed to not only allow users to directly machine solids, but to specifically take advantage of the additional information available in solids resulting in improved performance, reliability and efficiency.

Solids Positioning Tools

Since solid models are the main building block within GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids, powerful positioning tools are supplied to allow you to quickly and easily yet precisely position and orient solids. Not only are these tools extremely useful when modeling a single part made up of multiple pieces, but they can significantly streamline setting up part models in fixturing. With GibbsCAM 2.5D solids you can focus on how things need to be placed, not how to calculate the rotations and transformations to get them there.

Profiler

Identifying the manufacturable features in a part is a common starting point for a program. The Profiler, an innovative interface to interactively define features like bosses, slots, and pockets, is included in GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids. Unlike automatic feature recognition, the Profiler gives the user complete control over the geometric elements which are included in a feature. The Profiler can also interactively derive geometry which is used for machining. GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids' robust feature-based machining provides the user with powerful programming tools.

Automatic Feature Recognition (Holes)

Hole-making occupies close to 80% of machining time with most production machining jobs. Holes also represent a significant amount of programming time in production parts. Fortunately, holes are also fairly well-behaved features in solid models. GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids provides an automatic feature recognition (AFR) capability that identifies holes along with their position and orientation, and also determines various hole aspects (chamfer, counter-sink/bore, bottom condition) based on the hole's geometry. Leveraging GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids' AFR capability you can improve your hole-making efficiency and quality.

Hole Manager

With hole-making occupying close to 80% of production parts’ machining time how you identify, group and program holes becomes extremely important. GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids provides the Hole Manager as a front-end to processing hole features. The Hole Manager displays the parameters of holes allowing you to group them for processing. The Hole AFR is integrated with the Hole Manager allowing automatically identified hole features to be directly loaded into it. The Hole Wizard is similarly integrated allowing hole information to be directly passed for automatic tooling and toolpath generation. With GibbsCAM 2.5D Solids your hole-making productivity is streamlined and overall quality is improved.

VoluMill for GibbsCAM is an ultra-high performance toolpath (UHPT) option that uses a continuous, high-speed toolpath resulting in an optimized CNC program. These powerful, high-speed, high material removal rate capabilities can help you create the fastest, most efficient toolpath for a wide variety of milling part types in your shop. The process automatically takes into account the best option for milling pockets, including the speed of a tool plunging into the material and material removal rates. Variation in tool load is smoothed, allowing the machine to use much higher speeds and feeds.

VoluMill for GibbsCAM

• Improves productivity
• Reduces cycle time
• Extends tool life
• Up to 100% stepover with no uncut material
• Safely doubles machine output
• Up to 60% reduction in energy costs
• Fully integrated into the GibbsCAM, with the same look and feel
• No post processor changes required
• Automatic feedrate adjustment

GibbsCAM VoluMill^TM Wireframe option is included free with each new GibbsCAM milling license. Learn more » 

It is also free to GibbsCAM Milling customers on Maintenance. Learn more »

An extension to GibbsCAM's integrated Cut Part Rendering visualization/verification capability, Machine Simulation uses animated machine tool models to identify any program errors before they cause costly mistakes on the shop floor.