CAD-CAM conversion

CAD-CAM, they are always bracketed together when talking about production automation.

But what is CAD-CAM anyway ?

CAD

CAD stands for “Computer Aided Design”, the process of developing products with the aid of a computer and software. The benefits are:

• Electronic storage of the design. A CD or diskette instead of bulky stacks of paper.
• The design can be sent by e-mail to someone else. Fast, secure and efficient.
• The design can be retrieved quickly from a random workstation, no more searching in paper archives.
• A change is made in a snap. Erasing or photo copying is not necessary and it is easy to keep both the old and the revised design.
• A CAD program can check the design for errors or contradictions.
• The design can be easily transferred to a work file for a manufacturing machine.

CAM

CAM stands for “Computer Aided Manufacturing”, the process of manufacturing products with the aid of a computer and software. The benefits are:

• Manufacturing actions are performed conform predefined procedures.
• Products are reproducable “exactly”. “Exactly”means identical within the tolerances of the machine.
• Manufacturing actions are often performed at a much higher speed than when te machine is operated manually.

CAD-CAM integration

CAD-CAM integration is the process of generating production files from design files with the aid of a computer and software. This seems logical, but it’s not self-evident. The design data is stored in a different way than the manufacturing data. Even so, this is a very important step because maintaining quality implies that a design change is carried out in the manufacturing process correctly as well. In some cases the CAD software can take the possibilities and limitations of the manufacturing machine into account, so the designer can already be notified during the design process.

We think CAD-CAM integration is very important and because the existing conversion software offered too little functionality, we designed it for ourselves.

This software can be made available for you too. Please feel free to contact us if you are interested.