Meet a Mastercam Reseller in the U.S. Southeast: Q&A with CAD/CAM Solutions
When Mastercam users in the U.S. Southeast need help, they turn to CAD/CAM Solutions, a successful Reseller since 1994. The team provides full-time support to manufacturing companies in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. The company serves industries spanning from aerospace to medical to automotive to job shops, and its customer base continues to grow. Brian Kadow, CAD/CAM Solutions President and Applications Engineer, agreed to share what sets CAD/CAM Solutions apart.
Q. What Mastercam services do you offer customers?
A. We do a lot of training. We do 2D Mill, 3D Mill, Lathe, Multiaxis, Mill-Turn, Design/Solids, and Wire. We have a full-blown training facility in our Snellville, Georgia offices during normal times we can teach up to 10 students at a time. We now offer training for up to 6 in Huntsville, Alabama. Every month we have something going on. We do the 2D class at least twice a month, the 3D class we do at least once a month if not more, and the Lathe class we do just as frequently. We spread the Multiaxis, Wire, Mill-Turn, and Design/Solids classes out a little more. We only do those a handful of times a year; more like once every other month for each. Most of our demos are online, where people can login and watch from their location. We will also travel to do demos if a customer request that
We also have call-in and email support available. Our Snellville office is on Eastern time, so anytime from 8 AM to 5 PM we can help. Our Huntsville office is open 8am to 5pm Central time. We also take advantage of GoToMeeting when customers call and we start a GoToMeeting, we can see exactly what is happening on their screen and walk them through it. We can help them program parts just like that. We are here to help them reduce cycle time, reduce programming time, increase tool life, and manage problems. We do on-site applications, at the customer request.
Q. What’s the latest or most exciting customer application you have?
A. I just taught a Lathe class recently, and I had a customer here who is mainly a Mill guy. He’s been using Mill his whole career, and he wasn’t too familiar with using Mastercam in a Lathe scenario. We worked through some parts in training, and it completely changed his outlook on what the capabilities of a lathe with live-tooling actually are. He couldn’t wait to get back to his facility because he already had about 20 parts in mind that they’d been running on a lathe before putting on a mill, when they could have been completing the part on the lathe. That’s going to be a huge game-changer for that company
Q. What’s your favorite feature in Mastercam?
A. I like the Dynamic OptiRough toolpath. That is my go-to toolpath, and I preach it to everyone that I come across. It not only saves you cycle time and increases tool life at your machine, it saves you tons of programming time. A lot of people don’t think of that. All they think about is saving cycle time, but maybe a customer is writing a program that takes four hours to write. Dynamic OptiRough can take away so much time. It’s one toolpath that really roughs it all. With that one 3D toolpath, you might be getting the same result that you would from using 12 or 15 toolpaths in the 2D world
Q. What are you looking forward to?
A. I’m always excited about Mill-Turn. Anytime they’re developing new tools for Mill-Turn, I really look forward to it. Mill-Turn has such significance in the future of the industry. I’d also like to see more machine simulations for Milling. A lot of the younger generation now is so graphic driven. It helps to sell Mastercam when you can go do a demo somewhere and show them their part running in their machine with our software. That is huge. [https://www.mastercam.com/solutions/mill-turn/
Q. What are some challenges/opportunities you find that are unique to your region?
A. It is unbelievable here in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. It still amazes me. Because the industry is so different here, you never know if you’ll be working with someone on the medical side of things or with an aerospace company. That’s an everyday challenge here. We have to switch from Mill to Lathe within minutes. You just never know what that next phone call is going to be.
Q. What are some unique issues that you can solve as a local support hub for Mastercam?
A. Being local support for Mastercam has been a huge selling point for us. If a customer needs help when programming or they get to a point where they’re not up to speed with a certain Mastercam toolpath, we’re just a quick phone call or email away. We tell everyone not to hesitate to call us. We have made a lot of sales because of competitors that don’t offer that local support
We get potential customers calling here looking to switch to Mastercam because they have sent emails and made calls to their CAM vendor, and they don’t hear back for hours, days, or weeks. That is something that we take pride in here at CAD/CAM Solutions; we knock out our customers’ problems in minutes or hours, depending on what we’re working on. Always on the same day. Support is everything to us. Everyone already knows that Mastercam has the capability to do just about anything, but what I always tell people is, “You can have the best software in the world, but if you don’t have the support to help you with it, it’s really no good.”
Q. Do you sell any other products besides Mastercam?
A. We sell the CIMCO Professional Editor to offer a solid serial communications solution for our customers that need that support. We also sell Verisurf along with the Master 3D Gauge™ for folks that want to have their inspection software seamlessly integrated with Mastercam. Mastercam is our main focus so we are not distracted from our main Mastercam customer base
You can connect with CAD/CAM Solutions by visiting their website. To find a Mastercam Reseller serving your local community, please complete our Find-a-Reseller form.