Aerospace

Whether manufacturing parts for defense, civil aviation or space applications, the aerospace industry demands high-quality components manufactured to exacting standards. At the same time, the industry is changing the way in which aircraft are designed, developed and produced in response to the need to cut costs and reduce time-to-market. Components are often machined from tough materials such as titanium using complex operations, making errors extremely costly.

Features at a glance:

• Simplified NC Programming – EDGECAM simplifies NC programming for all machining applications by providing powerful milling strategies for horizontal and vertical machining centers with integrated support for tombstone and rotary machining applications.
   
• High Performance Machining – High performance 3-axis cycles are complemented by a comprehensive range of 4- and 5- axis simultaneous strategies to increase flexibility and efficiency of complex machining processes.
   
• Intelligent Roughing Cycle applies the most efficient approach move for each region of the model and creates trochoidal moves to avoid full width cuts, automatically adjusting the toolpath for efficient and safe machining, improving cutting conditions and allowing higher machining speeds to be maintained.
   
• Advanced Finishing Strategies offer intelligent lead and link moves for a variety of finishing techniques.  The profiling cycle offers support for undercut machining, which is particularly useful to the aerospace and automotive industries. Using lollipop or T-slot cutters, the cycle offers quick and easy undercut machining without the need for indexing or to tilt the tool. Support for 3D curve geometry offers optimum quality in a single processing step, without the need for costly and time-consuming manual finishing.
   
• Automatic Feature Recognition – EDGECAM Solid Machinist uses automatic feature recognition tools to inspect prismatic solid models and identify machinable features. EDGECAM identifies pockets, bosses and hole feature attributes to select the appropriate tools and machining strategies.
   
• Guaranteed Data Integrity – EDGECAM Solid Machinist seamlessly loads native files from major CAD systems including Autodesk Inventor®, Solid Edge®, SolidWorks®, Pro/ENGINEER®, Pro/DESKTOP® and CATIA V5. EDGECAM also accepts files in the following independent formats: IGES, DXF, VDA, Parasolid ® and ACIS.
   
• Full Machine Simulation is available with EDGECAM Simulator, a state-of-the-art tool that simulates and verifies machining operations. The simulation gives a realistic representation of the machining process, allowing the user to prove out programs off-line and move into production faster.
   
• Reduced Programming Time – EDGECAM Strategy Manager reduces programming time by capturing best practice and machining knowledge into strategic metal removal templates. The strategy templates are stored in EDGECAM’s knowledge-base, where they can be used to quickly and reliably reproduce components for a variety of parts, dramatically reducing programming time and providing optimized and consistent repeatability.

To help you realise maximum return on your investment, our industry professionals will review your manufacturing process and supply you with automation tools in EDGECAM that will consistently capture best practice and give you optimized repeatability.