Sheffield, UK | 30th October, 2024 - MachineWorks Ltd , a leading supplier of software components to the manufacturing industry, is pleased to announce the availability of a new cutting tool engagement demonstrator for cutting force analysis of CAM toolpaths.

The new cutting force demonstrator from MachineWorks. Top left: Standard view of the in-process stock. Top Right: The tool engagement surface of a 5-axis tool motion. Bottom Right: Slices through the engagement surface, viewed from above. Bottom Left: A plot showing the depth of cutter engagement in polar coordinates.

Understanding the forces that operate on a machine tool during machining is an important way to model and predict important physical behaviours, such as vibration, chatter, tool wear, machine wear and their combined effects on surface quality, workpiece deformation and springback.

Predicting the forces acting on the cutting tool as a CAM toolpath is executed is also important for feed rate optimization – understanding where it is safe for the tool to move faster, or indeed where a lower feed rate will produce a more desirable result.

An accurate in-process stock model is an important part of computing and understanding the cutting forces operating on the tool as it engages with the stock.

The intersection solid for a very thin scraping cut, created by MachineWorks' highly accurate polygonal engine. In the right hand image the camera has been zoomed in closely, to show the quality of the data

Based on WPF and MachineWorks' C# wrappers, the new MachineWorks' demonstrator is provided as unsupported example code. It demonstrates using the new end-position engagement surface API from MachineWorks 8.6 to extract accurate in-process stock information for cutting force analysis calculations.

You can read more about how the closed-boundary polygonal model within the MachineWorks Visicut engine provides more accurate geometric results for a range of physics-based analysis in this article on the MachineWorks website.

About MachineWorks Ltd ( www.machineworks.com, www.polygonica.com)
MachineWorks Ltd has been providing advanced 3D software engines to manufacturers and engineering software developers since 1994. Polygonica is the leading mesh modelling toolkit, widely used in a range of markets including digital dentistry, additive manufacturing, CAD/CAM/CAE and construction.

MachineWorks is the leading toolkit for CNC simulation and verification and is supplied embedded within a wide range of brands from major machine tools, CNC controller manufacturers and CAM software vendors. With over sixty major OEM licensees, companies who integrate MachineWorks into their software solutions include Dassault Systemes, Autodesk, Hexagon MI, OpenMind, CAMBRIO, Heidenhain, DMG Mori, Aikoku Alpha, Makino, HCL, SolidCAM, Topsolid, ZWSoft, Starrag, Liechti, Go2CAM, Manus and Hwacheon.