With increasing costs and demands, companies must make use of advanced software products. How CAM can support your company and keep you competitive is outlined in the following.

The term industry 4.0 is hyped especially at trade fairs, but the digital transformation is also met with fear among manufacturers and their professionals: will their expertise become obsolete in the age of digitalisation? Alexander Epple and Michael Königs explain, why the knowledge and experience of experts will still be needed in the future.

When automating machine tools, the focus is usually on loading and unloading workpieces. The increasing spectrum of variants, however, calls for flexible solutions from the building set in order to be able to adapt the automation quickly to the altered tasks.

The milling unit is well-suited for multi-face machining, the supplier said.

A toolmaker and injection moulder was tasked with developing a medical device; and then designing and machining a complex steel mould tool with around 30 components, to produce it.

SF Moldes, a mould manufacturer in Oliveira de Azeméis in northwestern Portugal, uses software from Tebis from start to finish, relying on programs from the point of job planning to actual manufacturing.

UK - Edgecam software is playing a pivotal role in assisting a precision engineering company become a growing contributor to the niche market of supplying mould tools to the UK’s rotational moulding industry.

Germany/Spain - Gunther Borbonus heads the German subsidiary of the Spanish machine tool manufacturer MTE in Montabaur. In 20 years the company has sold 1,100 large milling machines all over the world and currently expects increasing demand from tool and mould makers. The company will also be exhibiting at Metav 2016 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Even in deep drilling with single-lip drills, both when boring and drilling, the trend is moving towards tools with indexable inserts. The range of advantages is vast compared to soldered tools, with improvements in bore quality and performance being particularly noticeable.

Germany – Machine to machine, or M2M for short, is the magic spell for the factory of tomorrow. Only when machines can communicate with other machines without any problems will the vision of Industry 4.0 come true. But for this to work, inline metrology, integrated into the production process, is essential. Experts from the academic community and the industrial sector will be showcasing the current state of the art at the Metav in Düsseldorf from 23 to 27 February 2016.