Mastercam Art gives toolmakers the ability to quickly and easily create sophisticated 3D sculpted mold decorations from simple 2D artwork—typically scanned 2D designs. It is capable of reducing design projects that would have taken advanced surface modeling software many hours to a matter of minutes. Using intuitive freehand tools or dimensional data inputs, the user can create and fine-tune the decorations, and visualize how they will lay in the mold cavity. The software then allows the toolmaker to generate a set of robust toolpaths developed specifically for ultrafast and accurate cutting of artistic surfaces.
Operations Manager Darren Burrow says there is enough mold decorating work at the Mould Division to keep a Mastercam Art workstation busy 24 hours a day, five or six days a week. He believes they are starting to see improvements in programming productivity and some reductions in the time it takes to machine the decorations using either of their two vertical mills. Depending on their complexity, these decorations can take from 15 or 20 minutes to an hour and a half per mold half. He said, “The ability to easily manipulate the software allowed us to set up faster and produce a “First Piece” for decoration approval from our Engineering Department.”
There has also been a noticeable improvement in decoration quality. “We get great definition. We are able to pick up a lot of nuances in the decoration that we were not able to achieve in the past,” Burrow notes. Within the past eight years, Anchor Glass Container Corporation has been the manufacturer of 33 Clear Choice Award-winning glass containers. So significant improvements in decorating capabilities are the kind of progress that the Mould Division’s two customers—the Anchor Glass Container Corporation manufacturing plants and the food and beverage packaging customers— will definitely notice. |