Software with a great set of verification tools can be a huge help to quickly producing programs that are reliable and error free.

As you would expect, Alphatech's chosen software package for machining gives us some excellent verification tools.

As soon as the cutter path has been created we can visualise the cutter travelling along this path either from beginning to end, at any speed or we can 'attach' the cutter (with the shank and chuck) to any point along the path and track backwards or forwards along the cutter path at any speed. This gives us a great first check for things like direction of travel etc.

Once we have one or more cutter paths we can also run these programs on a virtual block of material. This block is not limited to a rectangle or cylinder. It can be any shape. It can be imported from modelling software as a triangulated file (eg: STL)  or saved from a previous machining operation.

Once running, the software will show us a real-time simulation of the material removal with read-outs of the removal rates and warnings of excess loading.

Various different options are available, for example: 

• The option of  'painting' the model at any stage to visualise the area that the next cutter is machining. 
• An option to use rainbow shading that uses a different colour for each cutter. 
• An option to use a different colour showing the cutter travelling in different directions.
• And a shiny option to simulate the look of machined steel  (This can even be set to simulate any machining marks that may occur on the machined item).