GabiJack.com

Could it be? Is it possible that the day has finally come when Gabi Jack has nothing else to blog about? Is that why this blog has been so, well, empty ever since she came back from SolidWorks World? Has Gabi finally come to her senses and decided to renounce absolutely everything related to 3D modeling, design and engineering, and instead put her highly rated athletic skills and daring personality to good use by pursuing a less stressful and highly rewarding career as a stunt double? Or is it perhaps that her recent failed attempt to train her Chihuahua mutt into the use of SolidWorks Simulation has left Gabi bitter and unsure of her abilities to communicate ideas and the possibility of ever becoming an educator? Or maybe, just maybe, Gabi decided she didn’t like this engineering thing so much and threw in the towel, sold her books and her computer, and took the money on a shopping spree? Whoopee!  Yeah, right…

Nope, truth is I haven’t been feeling well, so I’ve been taking it easy for a few days. At least, as easy as I can afford with two kids at home and no help available, anyway. During that time, however, I did get a chance to play a bit with an evaluation copy of HSMWorks, which is an application that works inside SolidWorks and aids the designer or machinist in the process of creating toolpaths for their models.  I must mention that I have no previous CNC experience, and while it may seem hard to believe for some recent grads, it isn’t so when you consider that, back in my day, when given the choice in college, I went for the area of specialty in Thermal Science, rather than Manufacturing. My college did have a manufacturing cell, but it took the instructors a whole year to get it working because they had to figure out how to program the darn thing in the first place.  I never touched the mill or the robot, but I did get to see them in action once or twice from my work space on the other side of the lab. If you have never seen CNC at work, take a look at this video. There’s plenty more like this one out there on the internet, just search for CNC or HSM.

Setting these machines up, however, appeared to be extremely complicated, which is probably why I’m so thrilled by how easy it is to create toolpaths with HSMWorks? Of course, you still need to make good choices for tools, tolerances, speed, and such,   and understand what  kind of operations you will use to achieve the results you desire, but  the nice thing is that you don’t have to write any code (although the code is available for you to tweak if you know how), just make choices through menus and property managers, just like in SolidWorks, and not only you can see the toolpaths you are generating, but also verify the results you will be getting every step of the process through a simulation of all the steps involved.  This is what I’m talking about. Take a look at this little recording I made of the Solid Verification in HSMWorks.  Once the verification is finished, it is also possible to check it against the model and inquiry just how much of the material is still left to remove. This helps you plan your next operations.

That example was one of the tutorials included with HSMWorks. I hope to make my own pretty soon and to learn enough about choosing the right tools and operations before my evaluation license expires.  This is a fun way to learn CNC, don’t you think?

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