Customer Challenge
Pyromation began operations in 1962 and has become one of the leading temperature sensor manufacturers in North America. The ISO 9001-registered firm and Lean Manufacturing Enterprise custom designs and builds thermocouples, RTDs/PT100s, thermowells and sensor assemblies to customer specifications for multiple applications around the world. Too often we see Customers whose engineering and manufacturing departments work in data silos with two main issues. Although CAD data is well controlled, the same is not true for CAM projects and NC files.
Project Goals
Vault for MAKE allows revision control directly within Autodesk PowerMill and FeatureCAM ensuring that only known versions of toolpaths and NC are released to the shopfloor.
Solution
Autodesk has introduced a plug-in for Fusion 360 with PowerMill and Fusion 360 with FeatureCAM to allow CAM projects and NC code to be configured within Vault. This plug-in is known as Vault for MAKE. PowerMill provides expert CNC programming strategies for complex 3- and 5-axis manufacturing while FeatureCAM intelligently makes decisions, produces results, and removes repetitive processes. Vault is product data management (PDM) software that improves productivity. Everyone works from a central source of organized data—collaborating, reducing errors, and saving time. Using a separate standalone shopfloor application, Vault for MAKE allows NC files to be delivered to machine controllers directly from Vault. Once the designer has released the CAD for manufacturing, the CAM programmer is able to use the plug-in to import the CAD directly from Vault. The CAM programmer uses the plug-in to check the project into Vault which automatically creates the traceability links from the CAD file.
Business Outcome
The plug-in enables customers to drastically reduce wasted time from working on out-of-date CAD revisions by automatically notifying the programmer about updates to the CAD. The plug-in replaces the old CAD with the new revision and toolpaths are easily recalculated and NC posted. Vault for MAKE completes the digital thread all the way to the machine tool. A standalone shopfloor application allows the machine operator to deliver the released NC file from within Vault directly to the machine controller. The operator is notified if they are running out-of-date NC files by comparing the Vault status with the files on the machine controller. If the operator makes modifications to NC files on the machine or PC, the shopfloor application allows you to synchronize back to Vault so these important changes are properly configured and controlled. Pyromation are one Customer who are using Vault for MAKE within FeatureCAM in order to bring all their digital data into one repository.
Conclusion
Chris Moritz, Director of IT and Quality says “As a company that produces a high volume of custom, engineered to order parts in timescales as low as 24 hours, having the ability to add traceability from the CAM to the CAD and be notified of any CAD updates, we now have the ability to efficiently react to late-in-the-day modifications and meet our customer expectations.”
Project Summary
Delivery Date
2021-08-16
Project Duration
90 days
Autodesk Solutions
Vault Professional
FeatureCAM
PowerMill
Services Provided
Collaboration & Productivity