CNC shop – ready to embrace a Digital Twin?

CNC shop – A digital twin is a digital version of your CNC machine inside your CAM Software. A digital twin is not just limited to your tool simulation. An accurate kinematic model of your CNC machine, including travel limits, Tools crashing with other objects like spindle or fixtures, real stock representation,3D tool representation, work holding and fixture representations, are parts of the Digital twin.

You should be able to do everything you can do at your real machine control tool in a virtual environment. There are a lot of processes that you could start to look at virtually way before you get down the machine. How does my work holding next to my table work? What do my cycle times look like? Am I running into any crashes? The last thing you would want to do is have to do those things in front of that machine because your aim is to keep running.

SprutCAM is a CAD/CAM software that takes into account the CNC machine model during the toolpath calculation. Before starting the programming, the user puts the models of the part and fixtures inside the virtual machine. After that, it’s easy to estimate the reachability of the surfaces when picking them for the machining.

All the limitations of the machine model kinematics and the actual rest material that remains after previous operations and the fixture(s) geometry are used to calculate the toolpath. The result of the calculation is not just the Cartesian points in abstract space; it’s the actual positions of the machine axes required to reach these points. This means that the CNC machine is 100% able to execute the generated program.

The machine Model courtesy @Applied Machinery, Australian dealer for Hwacheon Multitasking Machines

For more information on SprutCAM Software and product enquiries visit us at https://nctools.com.au/ or call us on +61 3 8618 6884