The introduction of a specific five-axis ‘Tilt’ control strategy, combined with a ‘barrel cutter’, is the most significant enhancement in the latest release of Edgecam — 2020.0 — from Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence’s production software division (www.hexagon.com).

Brand manager John Buehler says barrel cutters are recognised as one of the most effective tools when five-axis machining, and they are now fully supported in the Edgecam ‘tool store’.

As well as the new ‘side tilt by contact point’ capability, the advanced five-axis cycle offers further gouge checking in the Swarf command, along with extra ‘ink’ control in all strategies.

A number of new and enhanced features provide increased productivity for both milling and turning, and the recently introduced Edgecam Inspect module gives 13 new enhancements, including the ability to generate quick tool-paths.

The overall interface has been upgraded to adopt the work-flow ribbon tool-bar, improving interactivity; the ‘probing options’ menu has been split into two separate dialogues, so users can concentrate on ‘Output’ and ‘Inspect’ preferences individually.

Safe retract controls have been added to the inspection cycles, for users to ‘state’ multiple positions while controlling the probe’s movement.

The Index command now contains the ability for further positional manipulation (an alternative angle can now be specified in order to view the components on the machine tool).

A new ‘Angle to Line’ feature merges three previous commands into one function, allowing the angle direction to be specified in the data report.

Other enhancements to the Edgecam Inspect module include the updating of ‘constructed’ features, so that ‘straightness’ can now be specified while editing the ‘constructed line’ feature, and both the circular and arc features can now be converted and re-specified when edited.

Finally, around 50 enhancements have been made to the optional Edgecam Designer module, which bridges the gap between CAD and CAM, focusing on the specific needs of machinist programmers.