Delcam software takes company forward to the next level

Like many in the Mold Tool & Die industry, Advantage Tool & Machine are no different in feeling the competition from overseas, as well as from local competitors. "We felt that the time had come for us to look at our processes to see how we could be better, from tooling to software." said Mark Rees-Howlett, Director of Advantage.

The Abbotsford, BC based company started the process by contacting Delcam's West Coast Technical Salesman, Damir Hrgovic. With Delcam expanding the sales area in Canada's West Coast in early 2006, it was easy for Advantage to arrange a demonstration and benchmark. "Once we had made contact, Delcam asked all the right questions to really understand the problems we were having," Rees-Howlett continued. "This gave us the confidence that this would not be the usual sell and run approach we have heard about by some vendors."

In 2005, Advantage took delivery of a Makino high speed mill, but found that they were waiting for the programming to be finished, and it was holding up the machine on a large aerospace project. "Having had some exposure to PowerMILL, along with some demo's provided by Delcam, we acquired PowerMILL and PowerSHAPE on a 3-month trial basis." Rees-Howlett said. "Over that 3-month time period, Delcam was very committed to making these products a success in our environment, and we purchased the products in January 2006. Delcam has been very supportive and helped us through the learning curve with on-site training and internet support, we were up and running extremely quickly." With Delcam's two powerful CADCAM packages, Advantage now has the ability to easily modify customer parts when required, and automatically pull electrodes. Added Rees-Howlett, "We now can machine components exactly how we want to."

PowerSHAPE CAD software provides a complete environment to take product ideas from concept to reality, offering users like Advantage freedom to manipulate the surface from of the CAD model, build from a wireframe, and make global changes with solid feature operations and editing. PowerMILL is Delcam's multi-axis milling product, that produces NC toolpaths from CAD models quickly and easily. With PowerMILL you can make basic changes without any lengthy recalculating, saving a huge amount of time and money.

Being prepared for the future, and to make sure they were being as efficient as they possibly could be for manufacture, was the key reason for Advantage Tool & Machine to go with Delcam. "Our previous software, was doing an adequate job, but we were simply looking for something better, to take the company foward to the next level," concluded Rees-Howlett.