Are you maximizing your control’s technology features? It’s easy to get complacent and rest on your laurels when it comes to process efficiency. You’ve invested time and money in getting the right people and the right CAD/CAM system, and they both work well. But could everything work better?

Continual improvement is the primary goal. For instance, if your control has shop floor features, you can maximize the productivity of both your operator and your CAD/CAM department by trying something new. Utilize the CAD/CAM programmer for 3-D features of the part, yet save time by allowing the simple 2-D features to be programmed at the machine—this gives you the best of both worlds!

Your control might have conversational programming that you’ve never even evaluated. Due to advancements in user interface design and software capabilities, many features that used to be complex have been simplified for the user, which means you can maximize each employee’s participation in the process.

It’s important to realize that the software that runs the con-trol is continually being refined and improved as software engineers develop new features, create new algorithms, perfect code and find new ways to make the control better. Continual improvement is the core of innovation, and software development makes it possible like no other time in history.

Find out if your current control would benefit from an upgrade. Some companies publicize the advantages of new version releases and market new versions. So, if what you’re doing is working, how do you decide whether an upgrade is available and even worth the hassle?
Find out if your manufacturer offers upgrades.

If they do, contact the person you have found to be the most knowledgeable about your machine tool’s control—it might be the applications engineer, your sales rep or a service technician.

Do a cost/benefit analysis. What jobs are you doing now and how long do they take. If you upgrade, what will you get and how will that save you time on each job? Better yet, let the sales rep do that for you. “How much time will I save if I upgrade?” is your question. If it doesn’t save time, it’s not worth the headache or the money. It’s about time—less time to setup, which makes each job more profitable and gives you time to get more business.
The next question: “How will a software upgrade expand my capability, so I can do jobs that I can’t do today or jobs that require too much time to be profitable?”
Find out if there are specialized features that address your shop’s unique needs.

For example, one manufacturer’s upgrade includes an NC cylindrical wrap feature. This is a huge advantage if you are using a 4-axis or 5-axis machine because you can wrap 3-axis milling features around a cylinder on 4-axis or 5-axis machines. The cylinder can have any orientation and you don’t need to align it to the machine’s rotary axes centerlines. You can also do inside cylinder wrapping. Another feature included in a new CNC software upgrade is an NC tool review that eliminates the need to search the program for tool change commands because a list of blocks with tools used is displayed automatically.