JBM Corp. offers CAD/CAM solutions to meet the changing needs of Japanese customers. The company is about to celebrate fifty years of business serving their community.

In 1970, Osaka, Japan, was the site of two major events: The Osaka World Expo and the founding of JBM Co. Ltd., a provider of maintenance work for computer terminals, then still in their infancy. Eleven years later, the company developed and launched the first NC tape making machine – the NC 2400 – in Japan. As manufacturing became more automated, JBM began developing and distributing software solutions, including Mastercam in 1993. 

Today, JBM Corporation imports, develops, and distributes CAD/CAM, robotics, CAI measurement, and 3D printer products as well as other software solutions for machinery, molding making, prototyping, mass production, woodworking, and other industries. We communicated with secretary to CEO/interpreter Ai Terauchi and Chairman/CEO/Founder Taiji Sano to find out a little more about how JBM serves its Japanese customers.

When was your business started?
Since 1970.
 
Since when have you sold Mastercam?
Since 1993.
 
Where are your locations?
Our headquarters are located in Osaka, and there are six additional branches in      Japan. We also have one in the United States.
 
Where do you sell Mastercam?
We sell in Japan.
 
How many employees do you have?
We have 84 employees as of July 31, 2018.
 
Do you have any Mastercam Reseller awards?
We have received awards for the highest number of Mastercam sales in the world from 2000 through 2017, with the exception of three years.
 
What Mastercam services do you offer customers?
We provide training both on-site and in our office, as well as call-in support.
 
What is the latest, most exciting customer application you have?
One of our customers has a 5-axis machining application that cuts a simple hemispherical pocket, which can be machined even with 3-axis operations, for reduced cycle time and improved accuracy by rotating the part on the table and using shrink fit tool holders to minimize the tool projection.

What is your favorite feature in Mastercam?
Its versatile pocket strategies, including Dynamic Motion toolpaths. Mastercam has a great number of pocket toolpath options, compared to our competitors.

What are you looking forward to?
Design capabilities like those we see in some CAD packages (for example, parametric design, assembly features, CAE, automated dimensioning and so forth) as well as: 

• NC code simulation.
• Automated toolpath generation that is more advanced than FBM.
• Optimization of cut parameters (based on tool load).

What industries do you serve?
Automotive, aerospace, sub-conductor, construction equipment, machine tool vendors, woodworking, etc., as well as educational customers such as industrial colleges and universities.

What are some challenges/opportunities you find that are unique to your region?
Manufacturing in Japan is very demanding. They are not just satisfied with getting jobs done; they ask us for improvements in both accuracy and cycle time simultaneously, which can be, in general, really challenging tasks.
In addition, Japanese customers are very detail-oriented. An NC code that drives their machine in an expected way may not even satisfy them; they often ask us to modify their post for small changes, based on their preference or readability of the resultant code.

What are some unique issues that you can solve by being a local support hub for Mastercam?
Since Mastercam has been developed in English-speaking environments, it cannot handle Japanese (in dimensions and letters) very well. For example, Mastercam’s Create Letters command draws all Japanese characters as outlined letters which are not suitable for drawings and operations that machine the centerline of letters. To support Japanese single-stroke letters in Mastercam, we have developed a homegrown add-in called “Strokefont” and been distributing it to our Maintenance customers without additional cost. We have favorable remarks from customers who cut Japanese letters on parts.
 
What is your value added by being a local representative? 
We not only translate Mastercam and its accompanying documents into Japanese for sales in Japan but also developed seven Mastercam add-ins along with Strokefont mentioned above for manufacturing in Japan. They are included in our Mastercam installation and are available to all our Maintenance customers without additional cost, to beat competitors.

Our superb support also makes a difference. Even a very useful tool would be useless if users don’t know how to use it – to avoid situations like this, we are committed to after-sales service as well.
 
Do you sell any other products besides Mastercam?
Yes. We also sell other software, such as OCTOPUZ® robot offline programing software and Verisurf measuring software, among others.

To learn more about this Reseller, visit the JBM Corporation website. 
To locate a Mastercam Reseller near you, please complete this form. 

 

We are pleased to announce the second annual Education Summit hosted at CNC Software, Inc. in Tolland, Connecticut. Education Summit 2019 will take place June 25 - June 27. Please mark your calendar!

This three-day event gives educators the opportunity to tour the CNC Software facilities and meet with Mastercam executives, applications engineers, curriculum writers, partners, and Education team members.  

Proposed topics include Mastercam 2020, a new Mastercam user interface option, project-based learning modules, and training and certification. New for 2019, we are considering a two-track hands-on training session (one for novices and one for more advanced users) so that all attendees can maximize their time at the Summit.

There is no fee to attend the Education Summit, but you are responsible for your own transportation and housing. Lunch and dinner will be provided to attendees for all three days of the Summit. 

If you would like to reserve a seat at the Education Summit, please let us know by emailing education@mastercam.com. We will then follow up with you at a later date with more details and the official registration process.   

Mastercam sponsors SAE International student design competitions by providing free software and educational support to participating teams. John Milbrandt, Manufacturing Lead with Zips Racing, the SAE team at The University of Akron, recently shared some information about the team’s past season of competition.

Zips Racing included thirty students competing in Formula SAE Michigan, Formula North, Formula Student Austria, and Formula Student Germany. Here are the outcomes of those competitions:

• Formula SAE Michigan: 6th place out of 113 teams.
• Formula North: 9th place out of 35 teams.
• Formula Student Austria: 21st place out of 30 teams.
• Formula Student Germany: 14th out of 60 teams.

John said Mastercam was easy and intuitive for new programmers to learn. Zips Racing used Mastercam primarily as the team’s go-to CAM software. The Wheel Center, pictured here, is an example of parts created using Mastercam. 
 
ZR18 Wheel Center Mastercam Toolpaths

 
ZR18 Wheel Center Machined

You can check out their activities and keep up with the students on this year’s Zips Racing team by visiting their website and following the team on Facebook and Instagram.   
 
As part of our commitment to the future of manufacturing, Mastercam supports many educational initiatives and competitions to encourage student interest in technical disciplines. Student competitions like SAE International give students the chance to apply their knowledge and gain practical skills in design, engineering, and manufacturing. 

Thanks to John for reaching out, and congratulations to Zips Racing at The University of Akron on an excellent past season! Best of luck in the year ahead.

 

During the 20 years since the founding of the Advanced Manufacturing program at

Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, well over 10,000 people have participated in their programs. That number includes incumbent workers from companies across the state for training in advanced manufacturing operations. 

Today, some 50,000 square feet of space at the college is dedicated to the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center, housing dozens of CNC machine tools including machining and turning centers with up to 5-axis capabilities, as well as machines for electrical discharge machining (EDM), plasma cutting, water jet cutting, 3D printing, and sheet metal fabrication, along with 60 booths for teaching welding operations. 

From the very outset, Asnuntuck has developed a close working relationship with employers across Connecticut. They advise what types of machines they use, as well as the CNC software they prefer. As a result, the school has dozens of Bridgeport® CNC machining centers and Hardinge® CNC turning centers on the shop floor; in all, they have more than 90 machine tools available to the students.  They also have 100 computers networked in four labs, with 25 seats of Mastercam in each lab. 

In addition to providing an education for the school’s own students, Asnuntuck Community College also responds to the needs of many of the smaller companies doing subcontracting work for the big firms. They send employees to Asnuntuck Community College to take advantage of the training capabilities of the Advanced Manufacturing program. 

These companies discuss in detail with the Tech Center’s team the skills required for the specific jobs to be performed by their employees. The school also sends instructors from the Advanced Manufacturing program to many of the larger companies to teach their employees right at the plant. In the same manner, discussions are held with the companies’ managers and supervisors, and lesson plans are developed for the on-site instruction sessions.

 

Mastercam will spotlight our latest CAD/CAM advances at the XVIII International Machine-Tools and Technology Show (TECMA) 2019. The trade show takes place March 5 – 8 at the Expo Santa Fe CDMX in Sante Fe, Mexico. Visit Mastercam at

TECMA 2019 at booth # 730. 

TECMA is an exhibition of machine tools and technology suppliers that takes place every two years. Exhibitors provide solutions for industries including aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, and metalworking. It includes technical conferences for advanced students, technicians, and professionals and presentations including: 

• Perspectives of the Mexican Aerospace Industry and Its Business Opportunities with Luis Lizcano, General Director of the Mexican Federation of the Aerospace Industry.
• Present and Future of the Automotive Industry with Oscar R. Albin, Executive President of the National Auto Parts Industry (Mexico).
• Industry 4.0 Focused on the Aerospace and Automotive Sector with Victor Hernández, General Director of Sinapsite.
• Maintenance and Asset Management: Present and Future of a Reliable Plant with Gerardo Trujillo, General Director Noria Latin America.
• And more!

If you will be attending TECMA 2019, please stop by the Mastercam booth (# 730) to speak with our corporate and regional representatives, view demos, and learn more about how the world’s #1 CAM software can help streamline your manufacturing process. 

Mastercam will be attending HOUSTEX 2019. The trade show takes place February 26 – 28 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. Visit Mastercam at HOUSTEX at booth #1615.

HOUSTEX is a leading manufacturing trade show in the Southwest United States. It provides a fantastic opportunity to get more familiar with the latest manufacturing trends, meet with industry experts, and view live demonstrations of manufacturing solutions. HOUSTEX 2019 includes a seminar series on additive manufacturing, technical presentations, keynote presentations, student activities, and much more.

If you will be attending HOUSTEX 2019, please stop by the Mastercam booth (#1615) to speak with our corporate and regional representatives, view demos, and learn what the world’s #1 CAM can do for you.

The Mastercam Manufacturing Lab is where the world’s leading CAM software is rigorously shop tested. It is an essential testing ground for immediate and hands-on feedback. We run toolpaths and prove out new techniques in the same conditions our customers work every day. 

We partner with leaders in manufacturing to test their technology, too. We cycle through new equipment so we can replicate a variety of shop conditions and capabilities. Recently, Mastercam took delivery of a new Haas UMC-750SS, a super-speed 5-axis CNC vertical mill with 30” x 20” x 20” travels. 

WE BREAK TOOLS SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO
Our applications engineers work to make sure that Mastercam delivers the best in programming and powerful support of every element in your shop. They test the limits of equipment and toolpaths as they develop and test new techniques, strategies, and solutions to maximize the safety and efficiency of our software in action.

We may break a few tools as we test the limits of innovation, but it is part of our commitment to the future of manufacturing. Our relentless testing and pushing of limits keeps Mastercam users on the cutting edge of machining capabilities. 

If you would like to learn more about Mastercam solutions for CNC Vertical Mills or schedule a personal demonstration, please contact a Mastercam Reseller in your local area.

 

We have come a long way since writing G-code manually, shaving hours off of programming and machine time. But, every now and then, even a solid model can take valuable time to modify, especially if the solid was imported from a CAD system that is not directly compatible with the CAM software. The clock ticks loudly when you need to create a whole new wireframe or solid to perform a minor tweak that should take minutes. Recognizing this, we incorporated features into Mastercam X7 that allow for the direct editing of solid models in Mastercam Solids and continue to improve this functionality. 

Since Mastercam X8, these capabilities were expanded and organized under the Model Prep menu. Programmers can create and edit solid models – both old and new. A “history tree” lists the procedures that generate a solid model, allowing the programmer to edit any of the steps; you can move, delete, and suppress any part of the model. All direct editing functions remove this history, making it easier to edit a solid model without having to toggle back and forth between an “operations” screen and the model screen. However, clicking Undo restores the history as it was before the direct editing function. 

In Mastercam 2019, three functions have been added/improved on the Model Prep tab: Align to Plane, Align to Face, and Align to Z. All three are designed to simplify the editing process and shave additional programming time.

Align to Plane allows you to quickly prepare a solid body for machining by positioning it in line with a specific plane. The solid and additional selected geometry can be moved to align with an existing plane. A new work coordinate system (WCS) based on a selected face of the solid can be created, which is especially helpful when a solid must be aligned to an entity that must remain in a particular orientation. 

Solid Position has been renamed Align to Face and is easier to use. Selected faces of two solids can still be mated, but the edges of the solids that you mate can also be aligned. 

Align Solid Body, which was previously on the Turning tab, has been renamed Align to Z and is now located on the Model Prep tab. Align to Z can be used to select the cylindrical face or edge of a solid body and either create a new WCS or align the solid body to the Z-axis of the current C-plane, as if it was being mounted in a lathe chuck. 

Model Prep continues to be one of the favorite Mastercam features among programmers. Here’s why:

• Push/Pull allows you to offset faces or push edges into fillets. Vinny Decker, CNC Programmer at Oldenburg Metal Tech, Inc. (Saukville, WI), uses it to close 3D surfaces and fill holes. “A couple of years ago, I might not have been able to close up a surface or fill in holes on a 3D surface. At that time, I would have to go to our designers and ask them to create a separate model without the holes in order to run 3D paths on it.” 



Decker shares that 99 percent of the time he can suppress any feature on the solid model he chooses. He can extend 3D surfaces, move them up and down to add more clearance, or add more stock if necessary. “I don’t really touch surface modeling anymore with Model Prep features.” 

By eliminating the need to create a separate surface model, he saves anywhere from five seconds to an hour in programming time. 

• Move works with faces and allows you to translate or rotate them on the solid body. It can be used to move or copy faces or to add draft. Solid bodies reflecting any changes can be saved as stock models. When Achates Power (San Diego, CA) prototyped the parts for its green internal combustion engine featuring an opposed piston design, machining complex, hard-to-reach geometries proved to be a challenge. In particular were the cylinder liners along which the pistons ride, each featuring hundreds of pegs and grooves. Ultimately, there were many toolpaths and additional geometry that had to be created as well as transformed, translated, rotated, and mirrored toolpaths.  

Shop manager Sergio Ramirez shares, “Mastercam provides a really good way of seeing your parent stock or the stuff that you’re cutting, so we are able to follow the process of a piston or liner or other parts because we have updated models for each step of the process, and that has been really helpful for us when programming.” 

• Split literally splits a solid face into multiple faces that can be used with Move or Push/Pull, in either wireframe or flowline formats. Wireframe projects wireframe geometry into a face to form new edges and faces. Flowline, or UV, splits a face along its UV flowlines. An example of how Split can save a shop considerable time and trouble involves the reengineering of an aerospace part from scratch – no print, no solid model. The customer wanted to take an extension off the part and then build a new one from scratch. 


Oldenburg Tech Metal’s Machine Shop Crew
Toolmaker Brian Zylka, CNC Department Manager Rob Kerfscher, CNC Coordinator Mike Muecke, CNC Department Machinist Matt Dornacker, Lathe Apprentice Jason Gonzales and CNC Machinist TJ Schimke

Engineers and machinists from Waco, TX-based Kormachine worked together to reverse the dimensions, pulling them off as best they could, because the original part was warped and cracked; bent and distressed in some places. They built the part from the ground up, drafting a new solid model in SOLIDWORKS®, verifying it, and sending it out for approvals. In order to get this part to the customer in two weeks, they performed a lot of model drafting using Model Prep, printing, and then running the actual toolpath itself. 

According to owner Colter Kaspar, they broke the toolpaths into pieces and parts and put them back together again to see the whole. “We can build our stock models from raw materials, and then we can take stuff off or add it as needed.”

• Simplify, which allows you to simplify a body and combine faces on a case-by-case basis by selecting faces or edges, provides more control over the solid model and customizing toolpaths.

Remote valving housing. More than 98% material removal. 

David Gilbert, whose one-man shop specializes in making geometrically complex lightweight racing car suspension parts loves the flexibility Mastercam Solids and Model Prep provide him when having to choose different toolpaths for the same part. “With complex shapes I can’t simply pick a toolpath type and go with it. I essentially break the part into several segments and use different toolpath strategies for the different segments,” said Gilbert. “None of these parts are simple, even the ones that appear so.”

The ability to edit a solid model on the fly saves programmers valuable time when lead times are short. Gilbert is presented with new racecar designs during the winter months with lead times of five weeks or less. Oldenburg’s Decker saves anywhere from five seconds to an hour in programming time because there is no need to create a separate surface model for modifications. 

To learn more about Model Prep and other time-saving benefits of our integrated CAD/CAM software, contact your authorized Mastercam Reseller today.

Mastercam sponsors SAE International student design competitions by providing free software and educational support to participating teams. Patrick Jakubowski, Project Manager of Rutgers Formula Racing at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, recently shared some information about the team’s past season of competition.

Rutgers Formula Racing included 35 students competing in FSAE Michigan, Formula North, FSAE Lincoln, and Pittsburg Shootout. Here are some results from these competitions:

• FSAE Michigan: 45th overall; 17th in design; 37th in acceleration; 17th in skidpad, 31st in autocross.
• Formula North: 14th overall; 2nd in design.
• FSAE Lincoln: 6th overall; 6th in endurance; 11th in design; 19th in presentation; 31st in cost; 36th in acceleration; 18th in skidpad; 11th in autocross; 8th in fuel efficiency.

Patrick said the team used Mastercam University to get familiar with the interface, sharing that more tutorials on how to use cool features would be awesome to include in the courses. The team used Mastercam to design air intake molds, brake cooling duct molds, intake bellmouth, intake flanges, eccentric adjusting differential carriers, sprocket adapter, wheel hubs, uprights, camber brackets, and many more. 

You can check out their activities and keep up with this year’s team on the Rutgers Formula Racing website and follow the team on Facebook, Instagram @rutgersformularacing, and Twitter @RutgersSAE. 

As part of our commitment to the future of manufacturing, Mastercam supports many educational initiatives and competitions to encourage student interest in technical disciplines. Student competitions like SAE International give students the chance to apply their knowledge and gain practical skills in design, engineering, and manufacturing. 

Thank you to Patrick for reaching out, and congratulations to Rutgers Formula Racing on an excellent past season! Best of luck in the year ahead.

Mastercam, a SOLIDWORKS® Certified Gold Partner, will be attending SOLIDWORKS WORLD 2019. The trade show takes place February 10 – 13 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas. Visit Mastercam at SOLIDWORKS WORLD in booth # 506. 

SOLIDWORKS WORLD is an opportunity to be inspired by the possibilities of 3D design, network with innovators, and participate in training and certification sessions. Mastercam will be located in the Partner Pavilion. This is the hub of the event, where partners showcase new technology, tools, and applications. 

If you will be attending SOLIDWORKS WORLD 2019, please stop by the Mastercam booth (# 506) to speak with our corporate and regional representatives, view demos, and learn more about how improve your manufacturing process with the world’s #1 CAM software.