Comprehensive Milling Package

Release Date: November 24, 2008

CNC Software announced the release of Mastercam X3 Mill, which, according to the company, offers expanded machining flexibility and an increased emphasis on speed and automation.

Features of Mastercam X3 Mill include these:

Feature-based machining (FBM). FBM evaluates a part’s features and designs an effective machining strategy. It can detect solid machining features for pocketing, contouring, and drilling routines. FBM can machine pockets using new 2D HST roughing, rest mill, and finish operations. It also creates drilled, tapped, counterbore, and countersink holes, and performs spot drilling and predrilling based on user-controlled settings. All toolpaths are fully associative and editable after creation.

Multiaxis functions. Both the Port5ax and Flow5ax toolpaths include a new feature that allows an overlap/blend to be added at the beginning and end of a toolpath.

Mastercam in SolidWorks. This new X3 package brings Mastercam toolpaths directly into SolidWorks. It includes a suite of cutting strategies, including feature-based machining, high-speed machining, and a set of automated cleanup toolpaths.

Other new features include:

• import full SolidWorks history trees
• support for cutting STL files
• 3D high-speed toolpath enhancements
• 2D high-speed toolpaths