NUM releases new software for non-circular capabilities in CNC grinding

New software from NUM provides manufacturers of CNC cylindrical grinding machines with a means of adding non-circular grinding capabilities to their products.

Non-circular grinding is used in a wide variety of automated manufacturing applications, such as the production of camshafts, crankshafts, cams and eccentric shafts. However, it is an extremely complex task, because the non-circular contour leads to constantly changing engagement and movement conditions between the grinding wheel and the workpiece.

NUM has now added non-circular grinding functionality to its NUMgrind cylindrical grinding software, which forms an application-specific element of the company’s renowned Flexium+ CNC platform. It is fully compatible with other Flexium software, from release 4.1.20.00 onwards.

NUMgrind is specifically designed to simplify the creation of G code programs for CNC grinding machines through the use of a highly intuitive graphical human machine interface (HMI), conversational-style “fill in the blanks” type dialogues or a combination of the two.

Unlike conventional CAD/CAM workstation tools for generating CNC machine tool control programs, NUMgrind is intended for use in the production environment.

It enables shop floor personnel to handle everyday machining tasks very quickly and efficiently – and the work can be easily shared amongst several people and several machines.

The NUMgrind HMI can also be run on an office PC. Application-dependent projects, and the corresponding ISO part programs, can be created, tested with NUM’s Flexium 3D simulation software and transferred to the targeted machine.