ONGAA CAM for Wood CNCs

Working with many parts with many manufacturing steps poses a challenge in keeping things organized.   To have even a fighting chance parts need to be identified – labeled – to ensure that everyone know what the part is.

Even with the sophisticated – ‘123-4567’ / project-part numbering scheme we very often need more information and to ensure that the next person knows what to do.

ONGAA CAM has expanded its label printing capabilities in Nesting to support not only the following information:

• Project with Sheet number
• seq# and Part Number/Name
• Dimensions
• Material Name

An now also include up to 8 Solidworks custom properties and a dedicated ‘Barcode’ source property.  An image of the part itself can also be placed on the label.

Supported encodings are 1-D  (3of9 barcode), 2-D QR Code and 2-D Data Matrix.

In the above example, the first custom property indicates the edge banding color and sides … Read the rest

Process by Process

By far the fastest way to verify the programs do not have ‘basic’ programming errors would be to ‘see’ what has been programmed.  ONGAA CAM now shows a reasonable representation of the tool in is starting position.  The tool dimensions are taken from the Tool Database and are shown with the programmed compensation, depth (or through depth).  This will help in ensuring tool compensations are correct as well as showing potentially unexpected interference with other areas of the part.

Tools that are incorrectly identified appear as red tools of a standard diameter where as all recognized tools appear as green.

V Drill, V Route, V Pocket, V Saw, H Drill are all supported.

Full simulation

Once all the processes have been defined, a simulation of all machining is available.

 … Read the rest

The ONGAA CAM nesting interface has been improved to provide easier manual movement of parts as well as allowing renestiong of single sheets (in a multi sheet nests).

USER INTERFACE

The initial view of the nest remains the same with the first 4 sheets displayed.  By double clicking on any sheet a full screen view of the sheet is displayed.  Both the initial 4 sheet and the single sheet now includes the sheet scrap material and also left and right mouse button drag & drop movement.  If the sheet boundary is exceeded both the part and the sheet scrap boundary are highlighted to indicate this.

RENESTING

An option has been added to allow renesting of a single sheet for those times when then nesting strategy works for most sheets but not all.

The renest option also allows you to resize the ‘working area’ of a sheet and/or change the strategy … Read the rest

The Solidworks ‘Pack and Go’ feature is an indispensable tool for copying entire assemblies when replicating previously completed work.  The only shortfall of this tool when used with ONGAA CAM is that external information could not be included and this would result in manually copying ONGAA CAM files and renaming them if parts or assemblies were renamed during the Pack and Go process.

The original ONGAA CAM Pack and Go feature would copy parts and assemblies WITH the ONGAA CAM programs but would not allow renaming of parts.  Not being able to rename caused extra work if renaming was required.

The new ONGAA CAM Pack and GO now offers the ability to rename parts and assemblies similar to the Solidworks tool but also includes all related ONGAA CAM programs to be copied and renamed. As with the Solidworks Tool, the ONGAA CAM feature will also create zip files which allows … Read the rest

Making ‘spline’ contours is a time consuming process in WoodWOP but with ONGAA CAM, smooth contours are simple and fast.

In WoodWOP the process usually starts with a list of points that came from a drawing or by manual calculations.   These points are then entered, if done correctly, as ARC segments or LINE segments.  The result should be a smooth approximation of the curve.

Unfortunately many other programs that generate MPR contours only generate straight line segments.

In this image we show the difference between a straight segment ellipse (lower half stating with the blue segment) and an arc segment ellipse (upper half).

In each case, the segment lengths are the same.  The segments are easy to see in the lower half but the upper half required a square mark to identify the end of segment #2.

And If you can see it here, you will definitely see it in … Read the rest

Automatic Nesting

Several automatic nesting strategies are available in ONGAA CAM which provide a quick and easy way to nest rectangular parts across many sheets of material (directly from SOLIDWORKS).   ONGAA CAM optimizes the nest to both maximize material usage as well as minimize tool changes.

But not all part are created equally.  Automated nesting assumes the required material is as defined in the work piece definition of WoodWOP.   Odd shapes would waste both material and time.

Manual Nesting – ‘Nudging’

With the latest version on ONGAA CAM, manual nesting or ‘Nudging’ is now available.

Parts can now be selected, moved between sheets, moved on a sheet as well as rotated using intuitive button controls or keystrokes.

Unlike some other nesting solutions, ONGAA CAM goes not produce one continuous toolpath / process.

The resulting ‘Nested MPR’ shown here in WoopWOP 5 still produces … Read the rest

Whether you routinely make ‘left hand’ and ‘right hand’ parts or you use all ‘origins’ to make the same part, programming for a mirrored position in WoodWOP requires extra time (and care).  ONGAA CAM allows programming for any mirror position with only one selection.

To achieve ‘handed’ manufacturing, the program, designed for the #1 position, will generate a ‘Normal program’ and a ‘Mirror in X program’.  Although contour geometry is ‘mirrored’, routing strategies will be altered from climb routing to conventional.  ONGAA CAM provides a special features to overcome to need to think is reverse.  “Mirror Copy” will copy the process, with all the options and definitions, but reverse both the contour direction and the tool compensation.  Combined with the mirroring WoodWOP variables, each routing process can be turned on of off, by WoodWOP, depending on the position it is NC-GEN’ed for.

One program for any positions is more difficult … Read the rest

With ONGAA CAM you can create all the required processes for applying edge trim to the goods you manufacture with your Homag BAZ or other HOMAG/Weeke edge banding capable machine.

• Cleaning / Air
• Edge Glueing
• Snipping
• Trimming
• Notching
• Corner rounding

Optimizing Processes and Optimizing MPRs

Nesting – or combining multiple parts onto one sheet is a vital function for ‘Flat Table’ operators.

Until now, ONGAA CAM‘s ability to nest ‘complete assemblies’ has been received with both enthusiasm and a little reservation.

Users have ‘enthusiastically’ created all kinds of assemblies in SOLIDWORKS, combining nested assemblies, parts with multiple configurations and ONGAA CAM has created multiple sheet MPRs without a hitch.

Then came the next requests for improvements …

• How do I optimize the the processes? — the generated nested MPR made one part at a time — I want the number of tool changes to be reduced.
• I have a big assembly, how do I do more than 4 sheets.
• How do I tell ‘what part is what’ when looking at the nesting preview.
• How do I print the nest layout (with parts listed) so the ‘guys on the floor’

Since nesting is all about ‘optimizing’, we took another look at optimizing the nesting process to see where we could improve upon what we had.

Step 1, has not changed.  From an assembly click ‘Gen, Nested MPR’

With a single click, all ‘unsuppressed’ parts of the assembly will be listed, sized and initially laid out on as many sheets as it takes and that layout displayed.

The nesting process will take a ‘configured’ sheet size – width, length and thickness as well as a perimeter scrap dimension ans apply these while arranging the parts.

Grain orientation of part and board was available in the previous release as were the numerous layout options and these remain the same.

Step 2, Adjusting the layout options has new features added to help the process.

The first is a quick reset of the sheet thickness based on the thickness of the parts.  If … Read the rest