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moldmakingtechnology.com 35 Fidia's CK10, CK20, Compac, C2, C20, a couple of Fidia's trac- ing systems, and most recently, Fidia's newest C40 controls. Today, the company has 25 Fidia CNC controls, but with ongoing control upgrades and the addition of new CNC machine tools, Correa says it has well over 30 controls. He says they have purchased one of Fidia's GTFM.V3 five-axis gantry machines as well. In concert with the Fidia controllers, Century Tool uses Tebis V4.OR2 software for five-axis machining. Tebis V4 soft- ware can translate all the software formats, including Catia, Iges, Parasolid, Step and Nx, to create the best tool paths. It is the only software that can generate the tool path right off the surface. "It creates a greater amount of contact points, produc- ing a more accurate part," Guckian says. Each of Century Tool's CNC mills with the Fidia controls has automatic scaling features for each axis to translate CNC program parameters to fit the size of the workpiece and is con- nected, via ethernet, to the company's programming comput- ers for continuous transfer of CAD data. "This allows Century Tool to have the flexibility to expand the customer's product design ideas, but also the ability to communicate in direct lan- guage formats," Guckian says. Retrofitted for Peace of Mind Century Tool first encountered the new Fidia C40 Vision Control with its ViMill anti-collision software at IMTS 2014 and purchased the hardware and software components on a new Fidia GTFM five-axis milling machine right after the show. "What immediately impressed us about the C40 control is that it can handle very large data programs of 50 megabytes or more. Some mold surfaces are very complex and rich with detail. The Fidia controls can handle the data file sizes and still provide smooth and accurate finishes," Guckian says. "At Century Tool, we also work on older compression molds that need to be re-worked with new engineering changes, which typically involves more blending of surface cuts. Excellent finish is a must for these types of projects. The Fidia controls have vastly improved this capability by increasing their look- ahead from 300 to 1,000 lines of point data, which gives the machine the capability to prepare itself better for the upcom- ing shapes it is about to create." For example, high machining speed and excellent surface finish is the desire of any mold shop using five-axis milling machines, and Guckian says that Century Tool attains excel- lent surface finish because of its ability to precisely control acceleration and deceleration. According to Correa, the C40 Vision Control's multi-processor architecture manages user- interface, axis and tool path control, and ViMill real-time anti-collision software, which together work to produce the fast machining speeds and high-quality surface finishes. "It's one thing to have fast processors, but you need very good communication software parameters to enable the drives and motors to communicate at these fast feed rates," he says. "The Fidia control allows the machine to be fine-tuned for vari- ous dynamics, such as part weight, length and width, spindle speeds, rigidity—basically anything needed to achieve a very accurate finish in a shorter period of time." According to Guckian, Fidia's ViMill soft- ware in the C40 Vision Control is extremely user-friendly, and it is very easy to train oper- ators to use it. Its real-time, anti-collision fea- ture provides very safe milling conditions for very complex mold machining by projecting 1,000 lines of code. That projection prevents any collision between the tool, the machine and the workpiece in real time during milling operations, and in both jog- and part-program execution mode. "The operator has the ability to use the handwheel on-the-fly for the X-Y- Z-A-C axes and normal-to-vector compound angles. We are not aware of any other control that has that feature," he says. Retrofitted for Optimum Accuracy Typically, Fidia GTFM five-axis mill- ing machines are outfitted with the Head Measuring System (HMS), which has greatly reduced the time it takes for Century Tool machinists to verify the accuracy of heads and roto-tilting tables. The HMS reduces The Fidia C40 Vision CNC control, with its ViMill anti-collision software that features a projection of 1,000 lines, gives Century Tool the ability to run very large data file sizes and still provide fast, smooth and accurate finishes on large, complex compression molds like this.