"It would be impossible to build parts like this without our Delcam software,” claims Glen Hendrickson, a partner and designer at AIMMco, an injection mould manufacturer based just north of Portland, Oregon. Mr. Hendrickson was referring to one of their latest complex creations: the LG-417 Lasergrip for the GLOCK 17 and 19 series pistols made by Crimson Trace Corporation, a leading maker of firearms located in nearby Wilsonville, Oregon. To find out how the mould was made, watch the video on Delcam.TV at www.delcam.tv/aimmco
"The moulding is wrapped around on both ends, which makes it very difficult to produce a tool for it,” he explained. "The part is complicated because of the action required to create all the undercuts. Using Delcam’s PowerSHAPE CAD software makes it easy for me to design all the tool components and visualise how they will operate. Once the designs are complete I can export them directly to the PowerMILL CAM system for machining. This close integration helped us built the tool in an approximately six- to seven-week lead time.”
AIMMco is manufacturing their growing number of products even faster and better by writing its own software to customise Delcam’s products to integrate with its unique workflow. "We’ve been using Delcam software for about eight years” says manufacturing engineer Larry Sarkinen. "Our focus is the quick turn-around. We’ve developed methods for fast tooling manufacture with PowerSHAPE and PowerMILL. We’ve built some extra software around the standard Delcam programs; we’ve automated a lot of our commands, both to do our designing and our programming.”
"Customers require more complex parts as their engineers get better at drawing ergonomic shapes,” Mr. Sarkinen added. "We’ve had phenomenal feedback and support from Delcam to meet these challenges. The automation we’re able to do, going directly from our modelling software, PowerSHAPE, to our programming software, PowerMILL, shortens the overall build-time of the mould. This is always the goal of our customers.”
