CATIA Design Courses

​This is a compliment to the in-person Mechanical Automation Systems Engineering program. The goal is to better understand the electromechanical systems involved in controlling these types of machines and an even deeper study on the workflow of machining. This workflow includes the creation of models in CAD software, building toolpaths for cutting the part, generating the gcode to perform these operations, and then running the program on the CNC machines students built in the previous course.

Since this machining process is done entirely by students on their own they will need to understand all the steps needed to achieve the results they're after. Depending on the part, this can start with work holding and part indexing but also lead to more complicated tasks such as creating holding fixtures, machining accurate stock blanks, vacuum tables, two sided parts, and tabs. And this is just thinking about how the part's going into the machine.

There are many choices you make as an NC programmer and a machinist as to how a part will look coming off the machine. What will the finish look like? Will it need hand finishing? Which end mills should be used and what are the best feeds and speeds? There's even more concerns as to how much material will be used, how long the process will take and often how easy will this be to set up the next time the job is ran.

As with many things it's a process that can seem simple enough on the surface but the practical application is quite a bit more detailed with many choices and mistakes to be made.