One of the North West’s largest designers and manufacturers of press tools, jigs and fixtures has recently installed a second seat of Vero International Software’s VISI-Series CAD/CAM software in order to implement the increasingly complex 3D machining requirements of its customers.

Burnley based CMA Tools has a wide and varied customer base but being in the heartland of aerospace and automotive manufacture, undertakes a significant amount of its manufacturing for these sectors.

“Lead times are getting shorter, components are increasingly complex and the way in which customers supply drawings and models to us necessitated an investment in a high grade CAD/CAM software solution,” explains CMA’s managing director Brian Crossley.

“We assessed a range of possibilities but the VISI-Series offered us the all-round capability we required coupled with the range of powerful translator options in order to communicate easily with our customers diverse CAD systems.  Although PC based, VISI-Series is also exceptionally powerful.

 

“Another important factor was technical support and training.  We recognised we had to get up to speed very quickly and Vero’s training and technical support has been second-to-none.  We have four operators now programming machine tools with VISI-Series and such has been the take up by our team, we soon recognised the need for a second Vero system.  This was installed in the past summer when we also took the opportunity to upgrade the original software to the latest VISI-Series version.”

CMA Tools manufactures all types of press tooling from single stage operation, multi-stage hand transfer to multi stage progression.  Tool sizes can vary from as light as 50 kilos to 2.5 tonnes and CMA has the ability to prove-out all tooling on site via its 350 tonne press.

In the aerospace sector, CMA has extensive manufacturing knowledge of all types of jigs, fixtures, draw tools and hot form tools and against this background of diversity, the power, flexibility and speed of the software solution was all important.

“More and more we are acting as a tooling trouble-shooter for our customers,” adds production manager Jim Wignall.  “Customers will transmit the component data and model leaving us to assess the most economic manufacturing process and write the programme.

“Once this is achieved with VISI-Series, data is transmitted directly to one of our machining centres.  We are very hands-on; operators write their own programmes which has necessitated the computer terminals to be located in a central office overlooking the machine shop.”

CMA has also benefited from the compatibility of VISI-Series with a specialist press tool designer North West Design Services who also work in VISI.  The two companies work closely together and software compatibility is ensuring faster design and manufacturing processes for their customers.


Among the latest features and functional enhancements for VISI-Series Release 9 are speed enhancements which permit the loading of larger files - 50Mb files now being commonplace - and further increase the speed of operation when using these types of files, particularly in the reduction of calculation times.

 

With larger tools it is also often difficult and time consuming to highlight certain features of a model.  Release 9 offers vastly increased graphics speeds to cater for this along with a new user interface incorporating the ability to cut and paste icon's, users can develop their own preferred layout of interface.  Again, this increases the speed of operation and interaction with the software.

Other new features include external batch processing for toolpaths, the ability to calculate multiple machining projects external to the operation of the software and the ability to define multiple NC files and then calculate them separately, in doing so eliminating interference with the operators other work.

The new automatic splitting of toolpath by length feature breaks the toolpath into multiple segments allowing the user to define the most efficient length of machining and provide for tool changes.  This will ensure that tools do not wear out in the operation of a single machining operation.

“As well as investing in our capital equipment we take pride in developing the skills of our operators and since the introduction of VISI-Series many have commented on its ease-of-use and many integral features,” Brian Crossley.  

“If we have a problem the Vero technical support team are only a phone call away and they have proved invaluable in helping us following the original installation and subsequently if we have a problem or need practical programming advice.”

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