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CNC WEST February/March 2018 www.CNC-West.com 41 tical machining center with a dual-axis trunnion table that gives it simultaneous five-axis machining capability. Before joining Premier, Gillin had experience manu- facturing complicated plastic injection molds but hadn’t worked with five-axis machines. “When we bought the new machine I was tasked with learning how to program it and run it,” Gillin said, “working with five-axis programming, post processors and CAD software was a new experience. There were a lot of variables.” The multiple variables made it “very difficult to zero in on where the problems were coming from,” Gillin said. Some of the difficulties involved a machining simulation program that didn’t work well with Premier’s CAM system and post processor. “The simulation software set up was not very intuitive,” Gillin said. The complex 3D machining programs for the patterns were large files that required extended verification time. “I’d set the software up to verify the CAM program and that sometimes would take a night and a day to complete. Then I would find out that something wasn’t set quite right, for example a fixture was not in the right zero.” However, the simulation software would not enable modification of the CAM program, so Gillin had to go back to the CAM pack- age, make changes, and again output the program into the verification software. To resolve the issues, Premier acquired NCSIMUL Ma- chining simulation software, part of the NCSIMUL SOLU- TIONS offering of software solutions and services from Spring Technologies (Boston, Mass.). NCSIMUL Machine enables users to simulate, verify, optimize and review ma- chine programs based on the characteristics of the specific parts, tooling, and machine tool involved. Three-dimension- al graphics help users avoid machining crashes while com- plex algorithms and embedded process-based knowledge enable optimization of cutting conditions. Use of the soft- ware reduces the time spent on debugging programs, elimi- nates risk of spindle collision, tool breakage and scrap, and improves cycle times and process efficiencies. According to Gillin, “NCSIMUL allowedme to really start zeroing in on the issues that I was facing with the simulation software and the post processor. Once you have everything output into NCSIMUL, you can change things around. You The new patterns are machined from cast iron or a machinable polymer. Many of Premier’s connecting components have free-flowing, 3-D contours, and the patterns must reproduce them exactly. To efficiently machine the complex shapes, Premier recently acquired a five-axis vertical machining center with a dual-axis trunnion table that gives it simultaneous five-axis machining capability. This operation on a pattern impression of one of Premier’s 2200 couplings shows 5-axis pencil finishing, which is reducing the larger radii left by the previous cutters down to nearly sharp internal edges.