Mike
Eaton and Chris Fletcher (see figure
1) run a two-person machine shop
named Jessco Manufacturing Inc.
in Washington state, where they
make plastic injections molds, as
well as design mechanical and plastic
parts (www.jesscoeng.com). In the
mid-to-late 1990s, they had an in-house
programmer who wrote a custom CAM
application which handled all their
CNC needs. After he left in 1999,
Jessco started using Surfcam which
was already owned by a new partner
who had joined the company. While
they found it very difficult to
use, they battled through it for
three years, trying to comprehend
how it worked. “I tried learning
Surfcam, but I am more of designer,
not a CAM guy – it was pretty
technical and I didn’t have
time for it,” founder Mike
Eaton recalled.
Figure 1
- Mike Eaton and Chris Fletcher
of Jessco Manufacturing Inc.
stand in front of on of their
two CNC machines. Mike Eaton
is holding a cavity of a mold
for a Jacuzzi component, which
was just machined with tools
controlled by VisualMill.
When the
business relationship with that partner
ended, Jessco looked into buying Surfcam
but after analyzing the costs associated
with acquiring it, it would have been
prohibitive. Eaton noted the it “cost
16 to 18 thousand dollars just to
get started, and that doesn’t
include the expense of training that
was needed with every new version
– which also required travel
to Seattle. Then there was also the
$1800 a year in maintenance.”
Machinist Chris Fletcher added “in
addition, there were no solid modeling
capabilities, so visualizing results
was very difficult.”
So the pair began their search for
a new CAM application. Two of the
packages they look at were Esprit
and Mastercam. They were interested
in Esprit and even put down $6,000
for what they thought was a complete
2D/3D package. However, when they
returned from their Esprit training,
they found out that the reseller wanted
$12,000 more for the 3D capabilities,
which ended that deal. After briefly
looking at Mastercam, they realized
that for the same amount that they
would spend on 2 ½ axis machining,
they could get 5-axis capabilities
from another system they had just
started researching called VisualMill
from MecSoft Corporation out of Irvine,
California.
After evaluating the product and company
some more, Jessco made the decision
to switch to VisualMill. Unlike their
Surfcam experience, they found that
VisualMill required no formal training.
It only took about a day to run through
the tutorials by themselves, and in
almost no time they were creating
toolpaths (see figure 2) and cutting
metal (see figure 3 and 4). In addition
to the excellent tutorials provided,
when they realized the software didn’t
come with the post processor they
needed for their CNC, they phoned
technical support, “and 15 minutes
later we had it via an email,”
recalled Eaton. Even though this happened
four months ago when Jessco first
purchased the software, his sustained
level of impressiveness with this
degree of service lead me to believe
that it could have happened yesterday.
Figure 2
– VisualMill’s simply
user interface, shown here,
makes it possible to understand
how to generate toolpaths in
a short period of time.
Figure
3 and 4 – The
CNC machines in action making
the same part shown in the
previous two images.
While ease
of use and helpful technical support
are certainly MecSoft’s strong
points, surely you would expect an
expensive program such as Surfcam
to win out on quality and speed. “Not
so,” says Eaton, who feels that
he “can achieve a smoother finish,
while also having my toolpaths generate
10 times faster than Surfcam.”
Fletcher added that “the extra
selection of toolpaths that VisualMill
offers allows you to do a lot more
functions…functions that are
not available in SurfCAM. For instance,
tools such as the Drill Plunge gives
you the option of getting the material
out of there really fast. So you don’t
run a big risk of breaking tools –
because most of the meat is out of
there.” Eaton added how efficient
VisualMill’s toolpaths are by
saying, “we are very happy with
how the tools stay in contact with
the material an extremely high percentage
of the time.”
The pair also talked about the ease
of which VisualMill reads in their
solid models from SolidWorks. Via
VisualMill’s Parasolid import
capabilities, interoperability has
not been a problem at Jessco (see
figure 5). “Being able to work
with and machine the solids created
in SolidWorks saves us at least 30%,
time-wise,” noted Fletcher.
Figure 5 –
The Jacuzzi part was built in
SolidWorks and it takes 90 seconds
to regenerate, due to its complex
internal shapes. However, it
imported without a hitch into
VisualMill which also had no
problem creating a toolpath.
The final part can be seen in
figure 1.
Conclusions
If CAM software that cost one-third
as much as its major competitors meant
operating a program that was slow,
produced poor quality parts, and left
you without any technical support,
then it wouldn’t be worth it.
The same program wouldn’t be
such a good value if weeks of expensive
training were involved and it took
months to become efficient, leading
to hours of lost productivity. However,
using VisualMill, Jessco has become
proficient almost immediately (see
figure 6), and in the four months
that they have been using it, they
have already seen improved quality
and a return on their investment several
times over. “I almost feel like
we have been rewarded for the time
and money we wasted with other systems,
because finding and then implementing
VisualMill has been like a dream”
Eaton concluded.
Figure 6
– The final core and cavity
for the Jacuzzi part, with the
molded part in the foreground.
