I. Introduction
Sheet metal parts are widely used in electrical appliances, electronic control, communications, machinery and other industries. As the appearance and structure of the product, sheet metal parts directly affect the quality and sales of the product. In today's increasingly fierce market competition, how to use advanced equipment and technology to improve enterprise production efficiency and product quality is a common concern for every enterprise. As a result, while investing in equipment, modern sheet metal manufacturing companies generally begin to pay attention to the investment in software, and use software support to make the equipment play a real benefit and speed up the return on investment.
However, the general CAD/CAM software used in sheet metal products and production not only appears to be cumbersome, but also functionally inadequate. The sheet metal professional CAD/CAM software has strong professional characteristics, and has accumulated the developers' long-term application experience and professional knowledge. It is very different from the general CAD/CAM software, and can greatly improve the design and manufacturing quality of sheet metal parts. , Effectively manage its logistics and production. The following introduces several application examples of professional sheet metal CAD/CAM software in the sheet metal industry.
2. RADAN software provides integrated solutions for sheet metal CAD/CAM
A strong and efficient electrical cabinet manufacturer in Changzhou has always had a greater influence in the high and low voltage electrical cabinet industry. In order to improve the bottleneck in its design and production, the professional sheet metal software RADAN was introduced in 1998. RADAN not only has a two- and three-dimensional design environment, professional automatic unfolding calculation, convenient and quick CNC programming functions, and more importantly, for sheet metal The characteristics of metal production use a unique method to connect the entire product manufacturing process from sheet metal design to processing. In this new process, three-dimensional design is crucial. The system automatically generates two-dimensional drawings according to the three-dimensional information of the product, including standard three-views, unfolded drawings, and CNC machining programs for parts.
The company uses the online version of RADAN, which is distributed in the design and production departments. It has built a small production network to connect to the company’s existing network. It still guarantees the exchange of documents between various departments. At the same time, it uses RADAN to connect sheet metal design and process. And all aspects of manufacturing and production management. When the design department completes the three-dimensional design of the sheet metal parts, the standard three views are immediately available. The craftsman obtains the completed three-dimensional design drawing from the network and performs automatic expansion calculation to obtain an accurate expansion drawing. Before putting into production, you can also use software to simulate the bending process, check the bending manufacturability, and generate a three-dimensional bending process card.
Since the RADAN CAM system of the production department is equipped with a mold library and a plate library that are consistent with the workshop, the system's optimized layout function can be used to obtain reasonable material utilization and optimized CNC programs. The process is smooth and coherent, and no data conversion is required in the middle. Avoid repetitive labor and tedious manual calculation. Reduce the possibility of human intervention and errors, thereby improving production efficiency and avoiding production bottlenecks. The manufacturing of sheet metal products has been reduced from a few weeks to a few days in the past. Moreover, since using RADAN, users have some unexpected experiences. The professional expansion method helps them to unfold the problems in the original manual unfolding calculation. Moreover, the product prototype design is carried out by using the parameterization function of RADAN, so that electric cabinets of the same type and different specifications can be quickly designed.
In addition, RADAN has rich experience in cooperating with different machine tools. It can bring multiple rear parts to generate NC programs for various punching machines, cutting machines, and even compound machine tools. When buying new numerical control equipment, there is no need to buy new programming software, just add a post module for the new machine tool on the basis of the original RADAN, as shown in Figure 1. It not only saves investment, but also saves the time to be familiar with the new programming environment, thereby unifying the programming environment, so that the new equipment can be put into production most quickly and bring benefits.
3. Brand new intelligent processing software—JETCAM one software
A French-funded enterprise in Suzhou, the main product is high and low voltage switchgear, there is a Finn-powe: punch press from Finland and a TRU MPF punch press from Germany. JETCAM software is the factory supporting software for Finn-power machine tools in Finland. It has a large number of customers all over the world and is an excellent sheet metal software. Especially in supporting CNC cutting machines, CNC right-angle shears, composite processing machine tools and Finn-power sheet flexible production lines and flexible manufacturing units have rich experience.
This unit uses JETCAM with TRUMPF and Finn-power post-processing, so that JETCAM can program two punch presses at the same time. Due to its software's unique SEKT (Engineering Intelligent Database) technology, it not only enables the fastest and automatic generation of machining programs, but also enables rapid conversion of program codes between different machine tools, because the geometric information is relative to the machine tool, mold and material information. Independently saved, information about TRUMPF machine tools and Finn-power machine tools, such as materials, molds and process parameters are stored in "KET, so JETCAM quickly and automatically adds the tool path and placement suitable for the machine tool according to the selection of the machine's post. Micro-connection, automatic layout, optimization of trajectory, and finally automatic generation of NC processing codes for machine tools. When a machine tool is faulty or has a large backlog of operations, and needs to be exchanged between machine tools, you only need to simply specify the name of the machine tool JETCAM Automatic processing, quickly convert the program into another machine tool program, thereby alleviating the emergency state, saving time and money.
The professionalism of JETCAM is also reflected in many detailed functions. For example, according to the characteristics of the equipment, different kinds of layout methods are provided for different kinds of machine tools. The software supports plate turning and rotation, and the user can also choose whether to discharge parts in the clamp safety area. The software tracks the user's various intentions, quickly and automatically discharge materials, and obtain the maximum plate utilization rate. In addition, JETCAM software provides complete integration of MRP interface and external production control system, real-time tracking of the material library and parts library usage, and combines production management and layout to make layout results more reasonable.
4. Concise and practical machine tool supporting CAM software—PROCAM
The most common CNC equipment in sheet metal manufacturing units is the machine tool produced by Japan's AMADA company. PROCAM software was developed by Teksoft in the United States since 1981. The first product Ampuch-1/Ampuch-3 developed was tailor-made for AMADA and became the supporting CAM software for AMADA machine tools. The software is highly targeted, easy to learn, and very practical, but because the original version is a DOS version, the function is seriously lagging behind.
Nowadays, PROCAM software is continuously upgraded and improved, which not only preserves the original professional software style and simple and practical features, but also enriches the popular functions of today's CAM software. The Windows-style interface is friendly and easy to operate. Many users who use Ampuch-1/Ampuch-3 have purchased the PROCAM software. As soon as the new programming software is opened, the engineers are pleasantly surprised by the familiar menus and familiar functions. sense. After one day of training, I can quickly complete the process of familiarizing with the software, and found that the newly added functions make programming easier and more reliable, so I quickly fell in love with the software.
Since 1995, with the rapid development of domestic CNC punching presses, PROCAM software and domestic CNC punching press manufacturers have begun to cooperate with them. PROCAM has done a lot of work on the localization of the software, Chinese-made menus, and customized post-processing modules for various domestic machine tools. The NC program generated by the software fully meets the requirements of various domestic machine tools, and works repeatedly with the machine tools. While using imported software to improve the grade of domestic machine tools, PROCAM software also has the largest user base in China.
Five, concluding remarks
In short, using professional software and professional software suppliers to serve the professional field should be a reliable shortcut to the success of the sheet metal industry. It is like recruiting a reliable, stable and life-long service industry expert in the company, and using his accumulated professional experience to help the company reduce costs, speed up the design and manufacturing cycle, and make the company invincible in the fierce competition.
