From machine to CAM programming

Brent Beistel got his start in the metalcutting profession sweeping floors and cleaning chip pans at a machine shop soon after he completed high school. However, Beistel’s knack for producing parts eventually led to him heading the shop’s lathe department.

“Within a year of me taking over and setting up the lathes, I was programming all of them right at the machine,” Beistel said. Although the shop employed a programmer, Beistel wanted to learn to do it on his own. “Also, so I didn’t bug him for programs all the time.”

That scenario changed after he launched his own company, Beistel Machining Inc., Donora, Pa., and purchased his first CNC machine tool, a Doosan DNM 400 vertical machining center. Beistel bought the machine from Allegheny Machine Tool Systems Inc., McMurray, Pa., which is also a reseller of software from GibbsCAM by 3D Systems Inc. (www.gibbscam.com), Moorpark, Calif.

Brent Beistel installed GibbsCAM software at Beistel Machining after purchasing the shop’s first CNC machine. All images: Beistel Machining.

Beistel started with the GibbsCAM production milling option because he needed the software only for the VMC. As the job shop grew, he added options such as those for tombstone management and MTM (multitask machining).

On one program alone, Beistel said, tombstone management saved him up to 6 hours of programming time. The job required seven different work offsets for each side of the four-sided tombstone for a total of 28 different offsets. Rather than programming every individual part on every individual side of the tombstone, the option enables programming one part and duplicating it across the entire tombstone. “That also cut the work offsets from 28 to seven,” he said.

Beistel added that GibbsCAM has a reputation of being easy to use. He recalled writing a few programs and making parts with them the first day he got the software, but MTM is the package’s most complex component. “Only because there is so much you can do,” he said, adding that MTM lets the shop produce parts in one setup that previously required three or four. “You’re pretty much using everything GibbsCAM offers all in one machine.”

In one MTM application, Beistel said his company produced completed parts in two operations on a multitask machine that would have typically required two lathe operations and two milling operations. After facing the part and boring the ID in the first operation, the second operation involved loading the part onto a mandrel, groove-turning the OD, cylindrical milling (C-axis) the flange, drilling the off-center holes and inscribing the company initials on the outside of the flange.