Even additively manufactured parts rarely avoid machining and the associated use of CAM. OPEN MIND, a subsidiary of Mensch und Maschine Deutschland GmbH based in Weßling, Upper Bavaria, and one of the world's most sought-after manufacturers of innovative and powerful CAD/CAM solutions for machine- and controller-independent NC programming, now wants to show how its in-house solutions hyperMILL ADDITIVE Manufacturing and the clever use of the digital twin with the help of hyperMILL BEST FIT can take this post-processing to a whole new level of efficiency.

Thinking about later

But even before that, during the actual 3D printing process, hyperMILL ADDITIVE Manufacturing opens up the flexible possibilities of highly complex 5-axis simultaneous machining for both the Direct Energy Deposition (DED) process and Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM). The material application can be conveniently programmed with OPEN MIND's software and automatically simulated for collision avoidance. Even in additive manufacturing with the powder bed fusion (PBF) process, the potential can be fully exploited by hyperMILL. And finally, post-processing, for example the removal of support structures in the 5-axis machining process, can also be programmed in advance in hyperMILL.

Optimum results thanks to digital twin

Apart from the still rather rare special case of hybrid solutions, in which additive and subtractive manufacturing take place directly one after the other without a machine change, the post-processing of an almost finished raw part with often small dimensions requires alignment in the machine tool. With the hyperMILL BEST FIT function, OPEN MIND now wants to revolutionize this usually time-consuming work step. Instead of having to manually align the blank in the clamping with a dial gauge, control cycles and a lot of sensitivity to match the NC program, the CAM system takes over here and automatically aligns the NC program to the part position. This procedure saves time and also increases process reliability.

Software adapts to reality

The process is based on the virtual machine in hyperMILL. A 3D measurement is used to scan the unaligned blank on the machine and then the measurement report is sent to the CAM. Here, hyperMILL BEST FIT then adjusts the NC code to the determined part position. Or put another way: In this case, the virtual world (programming) is adapted to the real world (clamping) - and not vice versa. The corrected NC code is then simulated in the virtual machine on the actual clamping situation and automatically optimized. The process is said to work so well that even complex molded parts requiring the highest precision, such as artificial knee implants, are given near-perfect surfaces in this way during post-processing.

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OPEN MIND Technologies