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42 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST February/March 2018 can put in a different fixture if you want, you can move your clamps. That’s really valuable.” Because he could manipulate the machining program inside NCSIMUL, Gillin said, “I was able to trust that por- tion of the process.” The software, he said, “was kind of a pillar of sanity when I was learning how to do all this with the new five-axis machine.” NCSIMUL software detects the particular diffi- culties that can arise in simultaneous five-axis ma- chining. For example, Gillin said, “Issues are likely to occur when using five-axis motion and trying to squeeze a tool into a very tight area on a part. In the CAM program it looks good, but I will send it to NCSIMUL and see a gouge. I’ll look back at that area in the CAM program and more often than not it was an area where the toolpath already looked kind of choppy because it was having a hard time fitting the tool in there.” Reliable machining verification also permits Gil- lin to make best use of his time. “Premier runs it lean and all of us wear a lot of hats. Right now I’m the machine shop supervisor and I’m also the CNC programmer for the three, four and five-axis mills for tooling/fixture work and the CNC milling setup guy for any production needs. NCSIMUL allows me to set up a complex job with a lot of simultaneous motion, take it out to the machine, hit go and walk away, and not lose any sleep at night over it.” The free-flowing 3D surface areas of Premier’s components require application of small ball end mills in long-running programs to generate good surface finishes. “Some of our cut times are 12 or 15 hours and we can’t possibly stand there and monitor it the entire time,” Gillin said. The shop operates on one shift, so the lengthy cutting processes are run lights-out. “I have confidence that when I come in the next day that I’m not going to have my day ru- ined when I go see what the machine’s been doing all night,” Gillin said. Without reliable G-code simu- lation, he added, “I would really have to stick around that area at the very least, if not with my hand on the big red button, verifying everything.” Premier anticipates that the redesigned patterns will produce more precise castings that can be ac- curately and repeatedly loaded into a CNC machin- ing center, thereby providing a way to finish com- ponents more quickly and accurately than via hand grinding. To maximize productivity, Gillin envisions use of a horizontal machining center and pallet sys- tem with tombstone workholding to nest multiple parts and machine them lights-out. “So while using NCSIMUL for machining Premalloy parts is in our future, we are using it heavily now to help us get there,” he said. To resolve some programming and prove-out issues, Premier acquired NCSIMUL Machining simulation software, part of the NCSIMUL SOLUTIONS offering of software solutions and services from Spring Technologies (Boston, MA). NCSIMUL software detects the particular difficulties that can arise in simultaneous five-axis machining. NCSIMUL Machine enables users to simulate, verify, optimize and review machine programs based on the characteristics of the specific parts, tooling, and machine tool involved. Three-dimensional graphics help users avoid machining crashes while complex algorithms and embedded process-based knowledge enable optimization of cutting conditions. Use of the software reduces the time spent on debugging programs, eliminates risk of spindle collision, tool breakage and scrap, and improves cycle times and process efficiencies.