Courtesy of TDM Systems

TDM's 3D Designer for End Mills software uses four individual milling cutter parts—toolholder, trunk, front side and flute—to enable a user to create the desired endmill.

Users of TDM Systems Inc.'s software for tool data management often talk about the lack of data and graphic images for designing endmills. The multiplicity of existing tools, which typically differ in detail, makes it difficult to obtain high-quality data and images. Because of the variety and complexity of endmills, the tool drawing typically had to be done by hand, which takes a lot of time to complete.

To better support its software users, TDM Systems has tackled the problem by developing the TDM 3D Designer for End Mills data generation software. The principle is simple: a user creates the desired endmill with four individual milling cutter parts that can be flexibly assembled.

The software offers the ability to design endmills with the help of graphics parameters and sample data sets from 3-D models. Utilizing the graphic models within TDM, the user can choose four distinct characteristics of an endmill and then address the various parametrics involved with the tool to quickly create an accurate representation of the desired endmill.

The parameters required for generating tools come with the software; the user inputs them directly into the system according to each tool's individual characteristics. In the "configuration" tab, the user can generate any combination of shanks, trunks and front-side elements for an individual tool. After defining the geometry data and selecting tool dimensions on the "geometry" tab, the user clicks "start" to build the 3-D model. A detailed endmill along with parametrics can be generated within minutes.

Based on the data, the software creates a data record with all the relevant geometric data, including 2-D and 3-D graphic tool images. By selecting the "data transfer" button, the end user starts transferring the data into TDM's master database.

The 3-D tool images are generated in SAT, STL and Step formats, as well as the native formats of NX Siemens and CATIA V5. The images can then be immediately used for simulations.

Access to the endmill generator is gained through TDM's module, the TDM Data and Graphic Generator module. This module has more than 40,000 different tooling macros included inside of it.

The TDM 3D Designer for End Mills software requires TDM Version 4.3.1.2. There is also a TDM 3D Designer available for creating step drills. CTE

About the Author: Chris Rezny is TDM Systems Inc.'s executive account manager for the Midwest. TDM Systems develops software for the management of tool data and plant resources and was selected by the Sandvik Group as its competence center for tool data management. However, an end user can utilize any toolmaker's information and tool style as long as the relevant data is in a format that can be imported into TDM's database. For more information, call TDM Systems, Schaumburg, Ill., at (847) 605-1269, visit www.tdmsystems.com or enter #340 on the I.S. form.