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3D Machining Wizard and New Toolpath Engine

Product News Monday, May 5, 2008: EZ-CAM Solutions

New York, NY – EZCAM Solutions, Inc, developers of the EZ-CAM family of CAD/CAM products, announces the release of Version 16. EZ-CAM V16 delivers a broad set of product improvements, the highlights of which are a new 3D Machining Wizard, which greatly simplifies the creation of 3D toolpaths, and a new surfacing toolpath engine that introduces many advanced toolpath generation capabilities including Equidistant Finishing and Automatic Re-roughing.

The new 3D Machining Wizard presents all available surface-machining strategies using simple easy to understand choices in a single dialog box. A graphic help window within the wizard displays a graphic image for each parameter and option. At any time the Wizard can be revisited, and settings changed and the toolpath recalculated. Using the 3D Machining Wizard, any user regardless of experience can create complex surfacing toolpaths with just a few clicks of the mouse.

The Equidistant Finishing strategy can precisely finish an entire set of surfaces in a single operation. Toolpath is uniformly distributed in both vertical and horizontal areas, ensuring consistent finishing stock and excellent surface finish. New toolpath connection types including Spiral and S-Link allow adjacent finishing passes to be smoothly connected, and new Vertical Arc entry and exit moves allow the tool to gently engage into, and withdraw from, the cut. New toolpath restriction options allow surface-finishing strategies to be automatically limited based on surface slope, or by the silhouette boundary of the surface selection set.

The Automatic Re-roughing strategy automatically calculates the uncut regions at each depth level based on a specified preceding Roughing work step. A smaller tool is then used to remove the remaining material using the specified roughing toolpath type. This feature saves time by eliminating manual creation of re-machining bounding curves, and ensures uniform stock for subsequent finishing.

Other key features include:

• Updated material removal verification technology which now allows view manipulation during processing, and supports model comparison of the as-cut verification model to the original CAD model using color to highlight in tolerance, over cut (out of tolerance), and remaining stock areas, providing excellent visual confirmation and inspection of the machining process.
• Previously computed toolpaths are now stored with the job, and only recomputed when parameters changes require regeneration, greatly reducing overall programming time.
• Improved tool visualization and library support allows custom tool profiles and speeds and feeds to be associated with library tools, and a user defined tool holder library is also supported.
• Powerful new geometry creation capabilities include silhouette curve creation from a set of surfaces, surface creation from a planar curve, and curve optimization to fit tangent arcs to polyline curves.
• Many new features that increase programming speed and improve ease of use and accuracy, including copy and paste work steps between multiple EZ-CAM sessions, custom assignment of application commands to keyboard function keys, and graphic file preview, to name a few.

About EZ-CAM
Developed by EZCAM Solutions, Inc., EZ-CAM is a family of Windows® based CAD/CAM software products for 2 to 3/4 axis Milling, 2 axis Turning and Mill/Turn, 2 and 4 axis Wire EDM, and NC Code Editing/Optimization/Back-plotting/DNC. EZ-CAM was one of the first PC based CAM systems to enter the marketplace over 25 years ago, and continues to serve a broad user base of companies of all sizes in a wide variety of industries. For more information about the EZ-CAM family of products, contact EZCAM Solutions, Inc., at 212-452-2460, or visit www.ezcam.com.