Die, mould and pattern manufacturing plays a central role in the production of capital
and consumer goods. Ever-shorter product life cycles and the expanding diversity of
features require continued cuts in production lead times.
Recently, these developments in the market, accompanied by a simultaneous demand
for improved quality at a lower cost, are becoming clearly noticeable. Along with the
streamlining of organizational structures and advanced technological developments,
it is above all the introduction of CAD/CAM software that offers great potential for
reducing lead times for components with free surfaces.
The role of milling in the integrated process chain of die, mould and pattern manufacturing
is steadily gaining importance. This is due to the ongoing further development
of milling-machine technology, the cutting tools and their coatings, and of the
CAD /CAM systems themselves. Generally speaking, the milling process is divided
into the operations of roughing and finishing. For rough milling, efficient machining
means high stock-removal rates together with close contour approximation and low
tool wear. Rough milling is normally carried out layer by layer, i.e. in a 2.SD machining
operation with constant depth per cut because the rate of material removal and
process reliability are usually highest when this method is used. High-speed cutting
(HSC), which has been the subject of extensive university research for far more than
ten years, has meanwhile become established as a finishing process in many companies.
However, the application of HSC demands the observance of geometric and,
above all, technological constraints. A considerable degree of optimization can be
achieved when these constraints are applied to rough milling.
In the integrated process chain, the CAD/CAM system performs the task of calculating
NC programs based on CAD data which meet the requirements posed by
rough and finish machining operations. While general interest was focused on the
development of CAM strategies for HSC finish machining, advanced development of
technology-oriented CAM modules for upstream roughing operations was neglected.
The paper at hand deals with the development of a CAM module for rough-machining
complex components in die, mould and pattern manufacturing. It provides an insight
into the process-technological demands made on HSC operations and their application
in rough machining, from which guidelines and requirements on technologically oriented NC functions for CAM software were derived. These encompass both the
complete development of an interactive, dialogue-based user guidance function and
the algorithmic conversion of the calculation routines. The concept at hand was almost
entirely implemented and integrated in the CAD/CAM system developed by
Tebis AG, Germany, which was conceived especially for die, mould and pattern manufacturing
and is scheduled for introduction to the free market starting in April 2001
