Category: CAM

Designing a part is half the job. The other half is making it. Onshape by PTC, the only professional cloud-based CAD program, is now able to do the whole job, start with design and end with manufacturing, with its recently announced Onshape CAM Studio. (It’s officially a beta version, but as a demo is about to show, quite usable.)

Like most CAM programs, CAM Studio generates tool paths and shows animations of tools cutting away material. Unlike most CAM programs, it operates seamlessly within Onshape, and being cloud-based brings to CAM the advantages Onshape users have long enjoyed with their CAD program.

CAM Studio is integrated into Onshape as well as any CAM program has ever been integrated into a CAD program. Moving from CAD to CAM is seamless. Onshape users should have no trouble easing into the machine shop experience — though a background in machining operations, CNC machines, cutting tools, speeds and feeds, etc., would help.

CAM Studio is what Onshape calls “full cloud.” Like the Onshape program, CAM Studio runs on the cloud and stores data on the cloud. Everything but the display happens on the cloud. Being full cloud bestows upon CAM Studio the same cloud powers as it did upon the Onshape program. Such as built-in PDM. Non-CAM data is stored along with CAM data, something ordinary CAM programs need a PDM program for. And all data, CAM or otherwise, is stored on the cloud continuously and without effort. You’ll never again have that sinking feeling when the lights flicker, that all is lost (at least all your work since your last Save command — was it yesterday?). CAM Studio, like Onshape, has no Save command. You don’t need it. You won’t miss it. Your stuff is saved continually.

Even more impressive is cloud computing, which gives you access to practically unlimited computing resources. The previous generation of CAD, CAM and CAE programs may have required behemoth workstations at your side, but modern applications, namely Onshape and CAM Studio, don’t need them. Instead, you are tapping into data centers with row after row of servers crammed with GPUs in massive data centers. Such is the cloud. The scale of computing offered the ordinary CAD, CAM or CAE user defies comprehension. You can think of your computer as a terminal to a super-computer and you will have an idea of the power you hold no matter what you are holding. You can be holding a Chromebook or sitting at a workstation. Processes that can be parallelized, such as tool paths and simulation, can occur simultaneously instead of sequentially.

What Can CAM Studio Beta Do Today?

CAM Studio is being introduced with a bevy of post processors for CAM machines plus generic post processors. More are in the works. Users not finding their particular CAM machines in the CAM Studio machine tool library are encouraged to suggest them in the application’s Help. Onshape plans to offer a make-your-own post-processor facility in the future.

Onshape is updated frequently. With the update happening to the Onshape program on the cloud, new features and machine tools will be available to users just by logging in. Just as with Onshape, CAM Studio users will never have to wait for a local version of their program to be updated  —  for there is no local version. Onshape is updated (on the server) every 3 weeks, and it is presumed that CAM Studio will be as well.

We are introduced to Cody Armstrong, Senior Director of Technical Services. Cody runs all of Onshape’s pre-and post-sales technical teams in North America and is a familiar face for Onshape users who tune into the company’s What’s New demonstrations.

Cody starts with a part from an assembly. CAM Studio is unusual in letting you machine parts and assemblies. This lets you visualize machine fixtures, jigs and even the cutting machines themselves as they produce parts. We will see a CNC machine in 3D, its cutting head spinning, its table moving.

The CNC machine could be a water-jet cutter, included in the machine tool library.

CAM Studio currently supports 2.5-axis and basic 3-axis machining, with more advanced capabilities, like 5-axis, on the horizon.

Built on Cloud, Built for Machining

Cody seems to know his way around a CNC — a bit of a surprise given Onshape’s previous focus on design.

“There’s many of us with machine-shop experience,” says Cody. Darren Henry, senior VP of operations at Onshape, once operated an Acme screw thread machine.

Cody reiterates how the cloud that gave Onshape its advantages over land-based CAD programs also gives CAM Studio advantages over land-based CAM:

1. CAM Studio has PDM built in. Parts are tracked just like in a PDM but without having to learn PDM or having to do anything special.
2. Instant and easy collaboration.

What does PDM in CAM even mean? Manufacturing has data to manage, just as CAD does. With CAM, that data is tool paths, G-code, interim machining shapes (more on that later), machine setups, etc. Storing all that data alongside the machined part is unique to CAM Studio and makes the management of manufacturing data a breeze. You don’t have to think about part and data management. It just happens.

Collaboration, a capability that land-based CAD and CAM vendors have had to create and try to insert into their programs, is built into Onshape and CAM Studio. Designers and engineers (those not using Onshape) still communicate their designs with PowerPoints filled with screenshots and cluttered with markups. They go back and forth with emails with PDFs attached. All the time, they hope they are on the same page, i.e., the exact version of the design. All Onshape users have to do is share a URL. The URL links to the latest design. It’s not a copy, not a screenshot, not a PDF, but (cue heavenly music here) the one and only single source of truth. It’s live. It’s the actual 3D model of the right part or assembly. Onshape never have to worry about whether they are looking at an old version.

How Does It Work?

Cody dives into CAM Studio to show how an Onshape customer would use it.

Say you have created an assembly and are ready to machine a part. You create a new CAM Studio tab. It’s similar to how you would use Render Studio; it’s a new tab within the document. You define what you want to machine, and you add that component. Then, you machine the part going from left to right in the CAM Studio user interface.

First, you create a new job and define a body, work holding or define stock. If you are machining a cast part, the cast shape is the stock. For now, let’s keep it simple and start with a block of stock material. Next, you’ll select a machine from a machine tool library. The list of machines also includes several generic post processors, like one supporting a Fanuc controller (a common industry standard).

After you pick a post-processor, you can define work offset, define stock definition and so on. For the demo, we will choose a stock box point for my stock definition and a corner of the part to define my work offset.

Now to pick a cutting tool. CAM Studio includes a robust tool library. Here, we can grab a flat-end mill. Notice that the tool includes the arbor and the holder. That will become important when we go to simulation.

Now to generate the tool paths. That can be done a number of different ways. You can select the whole path or select edges and faces. Since we are initially doing a roughing operation, it’s easy to do all the paths at once. Just hit OK, and CAM Studio will generate all the tool paths.

The next thing we see is the hundred (or so) tool paths.

If you blinked, you missed it. It’s practically that fast. So fast, we wonder if it is live or pre-recorded. (It’s live.)

What Just Happened?

We must pause to consider the significance of what just occurred. The time to generate tool paths used to be time to get a coffee. A hundred tool paths could be lunch. Instead, we have generated a hundred (or so) tool paths on the fly.

How? CAM Studio is heavily multi-threaded, says Cody. Toolpaths can be separately assigned, each to a single processor, just like FEA, CFD and rendering programs do. A hundred tool paths can be calculated, at least theoretically, at the same time as one.

“Before this, you were bound by the number of cores on your CPU,” says Cody. “Now, you can use a hundred GPUs on the cloud.”

Are a hundred tool paths common, or is this an exaggeration? Cody sticks to his story.

“A very complicated part being machined could have multiple operations coming from different directions, with potential for five, six setups for the part and each setup has 20 toolpaths, then you can get into the hundreds,’ he says. “That may be extreme in 2.5-axis. With increased complexity, say a part being milled on a 3-axis machine, you can have hundreds, even a thousand tool paths.”

Show Me (Machine Tool Simulation)

You can elect to have CAM Studio show the tool moving along the paths with the stock removal. Without (Backplot option) is quicker, but honestly, showing the machine tool paths with stock removal is way more fun to watch  — and can actually be informative.

Simulation is what CAM guys call the animation, in this case, 3D animation, of the cutting tool removing material.

I may have seen such simulations a hundred times, yet I’m hypnotized. The flat-end mill furrows through the block in parallel rows, removing material. It’s like mowing the lawn — if your lawnmower could cut perfectly parallel rows and adjust cutting height on the fly.

With stock removal turned on (Verify mode), machinists can make educated guesses as to whether the cutting tool will gouge or plunge as it should.

I dream of a physics-based simulation that accounts for the strength of materials, kinetic energy, temperature, friction, non-linear deformation, and tool wear… to give a more realistic simulation.

I awaken to hear that CAM Studio automatically generates a model of the part after each machining operation. For example, the shape after after the roughing operation is saved. Automatically. You didn’t have to remember to export the intermediate shape for the record as you would have had to do with other CAM programs. You don’t have to take screenshots — CAM Studio has saved the whole model.

The intermediate shapes are saved in the background. They are like breadcrumbs. Use them to retrace the steps  —  or add more steps. Suppose you wanted to do a final 3-axis finish on the part with a small diameter ball end mill. Ordinary CAM programs may have you start from the original rectangular stock material. With CAM Studio, you can access the intermediate shapes easily by clicking a button and pick up the machining from there.

Show Me the Machine

“One more thing,” says Cody. “We include full machine kinematics.”

Showing the CNC in the animation is always welcome; showing it in a browser is unique.

Hey, that’s what the cloud and “infinite computing” can do; we are learning.

But what purpose does animating the table on a cutting machine actually serve? Beyond being fascinating.

Cody patiently explains the value of full-machine kinematics.

“Suppose your tool path has your cutter colliding with a fixture or the machine. You are going to want to see that before it happens,” says Cody.

Indeed, tool collisions have a way of disrupting your manufacturing operation. The worst case is you have wrecked your expensive CNC machine.

But a tool collision in simulation — before production — will still have you seeing red only on the screen. With CAM Studio’s full-machine kinematics, all colliding parts, whether they are the work, the fixtures or parts of the machine itself, light up in red. And everything freezes. As it might in real life. Except with CAM Studio, you may have averted a disaster. You don’t have to hang up your shop apron and wonder if you still have a job. You have options. You can continue with the animation like a collision never happened (don’t), or you can have CAM Studio avoid the collision altogether.

Other CAM programs may offer full-machine kinematics as an extra-cost option, adds Cody, concluding the demo.

Conclusion

CAM Studio should be a welcome addition for Onshape users, letting them complete the journey from design to manufacturing — so long as the manufacturing is of the 2.5-axis and basic 3-axis type. CAM Studio Advanced, coming next, will support advanced 3-axis, along with positional and simultaneous 4- and 5-axis machining. CAM Studio makes the transition from design to manufacturing seamless. You don’t have to export your CAD model to a CAM program. CAM Studio works off the same Onshape model CAD users have access to. Because it is fully cloud-based, users can rest assured they have the latest version of the model. CAM Studio users will enjoy the same cloud benefits as Onshape users: built-in data management, effortless collaboration, power as needed (particularly useful in generating and animating toolpaths) and my favorite: never again losing work when the power goes out. What a relief that is!

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