PowerMill 2019.1 has got NEW Probing Functionality – Autodesk

In the latest technical corner with leading CAM vendor Autodesk, Clinton Perry tells MTDCNC all about the latest addition to PowerMill – its latest probing function feature. 

Autodesk’s Clinton Perry tells Joe: “Probing functions inside CAM software isn’t revolutionary, but PowerMill has never had a probing feature. So, if you are an Autodesk user and you are manufacturing with a need to use spindle probes, we would have previously recommended that customers use PowerInspect, which allows you to use a program the probe path and deliver an NC output to the machine, but that would then have to be combined with PowerMill to machine and measure your components.”

“Previously that would have resulted in customers having to learn and use two pieces of software. It would also give you the pain of managing multiple files. Many of our PowerMill users have asked for probing functionality and this is exactly what we have done. What we haven’t done is re-written probing, we’ve taken some of the cool features out of PowerInspect and plugged that into PowerMill. This allows our users to create a probe tool with a simple probe body and stylus and then create a probe path that is based on a wire framed geometry. So, you can use the tool path to create the probe path. This means that by using a modified post-processor, the probing cycle can be transferred to the machine tool.”

“By adding this feature into PowerMill, we are reducing the need for additional products. This makes everything happen inside one environment to give a simplified and streamlined user experience. For years, PowerMill has had the facility to avoid collisions and this has been extended to the probing cycle. We have also incorporated tools for collaborating and reviewing those inspection results.”

“If you are a PowerMill user with a subscription or perpetual license, you can create these probe parts and save them to the machine tool. If you are a subscriber, you also have the facility to use Autodesk Drive to take the result from the machine tool, load them into the Cloud and interrogate the results using a collaborator 3D view. This provides factory wide access rather than downloading a HTML file and sharing the data around the factory.”