Machining to the tune of an experienced machinist

Bob Fischer, VX’s vice president of sales and marketing, makes the point that machining a block of steel into a highly finished part involves many different tool paths, from the initial roughing phase to finishing. “While many decisions can be automated, each machine shop has its own approach and rules for machining based on their operational strategies, age and condition of equipment, experiences and preferences of their machinists and a host of other factors,” says Fischer. As a result, he says, defining the machining for a part tailored to a machine shop’s specific needs can span multiple days – causing bottlenecks and restricting the number of new jobs a shop can accept. Intelligent Machining Automation now tackles that, says fischer, by allowing users to establish their own rules for machining a part. Then, once the tool paths are developed and saved for a part, VX can use these tool paths and rules as a knowledge base for automating development of machining for a vast array of other parts. “This greatly reduces the time required for programming new parts from a matter of days to a matter of minutes. In essence, VX captures and uses the knowledge and logic of an experienced machinist for automatically generating machining.”