Mastercam Plays Pivotal Role in Educating New and Current Machinists at SiMT

From new product development to rapid prototyping to machining services and even 3D virtual development, the Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology (SiMT) is a premiere technical service provider and training facility for industry in the southeastern US.

Its state-of-the-art facilities costing $37,000,000 encompasses 177,000 sq. ft. located on a 146-acre campus in Florence, SC. SiMT provides engineering/CAD/CAM, rapid prototyping and 3D/virtual reality services as well as leading edge manufacturing workforce development and business process training to students and businesses. This strategic training and manufacturing technology solution helps maximize workforce productivity in advanced manufacturing environments.

Its advanced machining center has an investment of roughly $9,000,000 in machine tools with the latest machining equipment available for both skilled worker training and actual product development. CNC, EDM, multiple-axis machines, grinders and the latest versions of Mastercam CAD/CAM software (from CNC Software Inc.) are available for businesses that don't want to devote time or capital in creating their own production systems. SiMT can assist a company in developing advanced manufacturing processes and automated manufacturing techniques. Their personnel can offer consulting services in many areas of manufacturing to improve the quality, productivity and profitability of a company.

Shawn Reed, Program Director of machine tool technology, said, "The focus of this facility is advanced manufacturing. We have roughly 20 CNC machines with 25 manual machines. All of the CNCs use Mastercam for toolpath programming. Mastercam's resellers worked with us and we worked with them to develop their software as our primary machining software partner. We have 20 seats of Mastercam X2 software for lathe, mill, router and EDM machining."

Reed said that in their machining classes they teach a very difficult type of machining: tool and die work. The thinking behind teaching tool and die work rather than producing production CNC parts is that so many different components need to be made for a die set. If a student can make all the different die components on any CNC machine, they pretty much can program any type of part.

They start students off on manual machine tools to let them get the feel of machining and then move them to CNC machines. They introduce students to the most difficult type of machining to give them a taste of how intricate a cutting application can be. They quickly learn that manufacturing can involve complex surfacing, extremely tight accuracies for features, along with exacting surface finishes.

Reed said, "We start students off from the ground level using manual machines. We take the student who might not have any machining knowledge, and we teach them blueprint reading, manual machining, how to draw blueprints and to understand different accessories for the manual equipment.

"After they are competent with manual equipment, then we go to the CNC side with die making. For a long time, our primary focus for teaching students machining has been on tool and die parts. We produce tooling, but we make it using different ways on CNC machines instead of the jig bore equipment previously used for this type of work. We offer a certificate program in CNC programming along with an Associates degree in tool and die making with the use of CNC equipment. We teach six CNC classes for programming, where we start from basic machining to the most advanced using live tooling and multiaxis equipment.

"Students start with the most difficult parts to machine. The level of die making includes producing three different types of dies. These parts require many tool changes and setups and hands on involvement from the students."

Before SiMT began using Mastercam software, Reed said, "We looked at other toolpath software programs, and we looked at the number of Mastercam seats that are in the field versus the other companies that don't have as many seats. And not to short any other software maker, but we had a very good working relationship with Mastercam reseller Mark Richardson of Learning

Labs. Inc. Their sales staff and our working relationship with Mastercam on the educational side have been great. They'll come out and put on classes to teach us the new software at our facility. It helps out tremendously by keeping the instructors abreast of all the new features. It's excellent software."

Another reason Reed said he picked Mastercam was because of the intuitive nature of its use. He said, "The way I look at Mastercam is if a student can get through it and has a good understanding of it, and if they go to another industry or another company that doesn't use Mastercam, the learning curve for another toolpath software will be significantly less. This is because I've found that other types of programs are somewhat similar, but not as widely used in industry."

Along with Mastercam's surfacing functionality, which is used quite often for machining stamping dies and punches, Reed said that he really likes Mastercam's drawing features. He said, "The CAM feature is not difficult, and it's easy to learn. Being a PC Windows-based application is very helpful."

Reed said that so far his students have given him a lot of good response with Mastercam. But, he said, "The one problem we have is that the students try to jump way ahead of the instructor in the program, because Mastercam can do so many different things. We have to reign in the students to make sure they understand the basics before they move on to other portions of the software."

When asked how Mastercam has benefited the students, Reed said, "From what I've seen, we've had a couple of just graduated students go out into the industry with knowledge of the latest version of Mastercam, and companies are buying Mastercam instead of other programs because of what these students were trained with.

"We have roughly 48 machine shops in our service area, which includes three counties. The percentage that uses the newest version of Mastercam is growing significantly."

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