OPEN MIND Technologies Moves Further Into Additive with hyperMILL CAD CAM

OPEN MIND Technologies makes CAD CAM software, usually for 5-axis milling, turning machines, and similar. Its hyperMILL CAM tool delivers a lot of G-code for a lot of machines worldwide. Now, the German firm seems to be embracing the additive opportunity even more with some AM capability for its new hyperMILL CAD CAM. Worldwide, hyperMILL is a well regarded package that is a daily tool for many machinists and engineers in aviation, manufacturing, and beyond.

The hyperMILL 2025 CAD/CAM Software Suite caters to 3D, 2.5D, and five axis machining. It now has a “Linking Job” in hyperMILL Additive Manufacturing for optimized workflows. The job lets you automatically orient your tool, and depending on the part geometry, an indexed or simultaneous tool path will be generated. With indexed (also called indexical, 3+1 and indexial) milling, the workpiece is moved to a set position, and the tool works on it in a series of set positions. Simultaneous milling moves the tool along the entire part geometry. Indexed is generally cheaper, faster, and used for simpler geometries, while simultaneous is for more complex and expensive parts.

Depending on the 3D printing step and the part, the right subtractive tool path will be chosen by hyperMill. Overall, it is hoped that the more exacting and time-consuming pathing is used when needed, so time is saved on portions of a part that can be done more cheaply.

The company has also come up with a new deburring strategy, which automatically identifies holes and sets up the deburring process for the edges of those holes that need demurring. The tool will generate resulting tool paths for both 3- and 5-axis operations. There is also an automatic edge deburring strategy for 5-axis with collision avoidance.

Additionally, “The pocket milling algorithm for high feed cutters in hyperMILL 2025 has been redeveloped for 3D-optimized roughing, achieving greater efficiency during roughing as well as better machining control, especially helpful when machining large lateral in-feeds and remaining material. Contour and path radii can also be defined, resulting in improved toolpath rounding.”

A Dynamic Stock counter will now also take into account stock for all jobs on the machine, including those resulting from linking jobs. There have also been updates to spindle operations for Fanuc, Siemens, and Mazak controls.

There is a vibrant and very competitive market out there for CAD CAM solutions. We don’t often discuss products such as Mastercam, Gibbs CAM, WorkNC, TopSolid, ESPRIT, EDGECAM, and ModuleWorks here, but as we move towards cell-based manufacturing solutions, we are intruding in the territory of firms embedded deeply into people’s manufacturing workflows. As AiBuild and Adaxis extend their capabilities, they too will intrude on this space. At one point, someone is going to power all of the robot arms doing DED, concrete 3D printing, and large format plastic extrusion, and a lot of those machines will use milling as a post processing (or inline) operation. Therefore, what hyperMILL is capable of doing will be more important to us going forward. There is a collision course in the making between the 3D printing software market, efficient additive and subtractive cell-based manufacturing, and the CAD CAM market.

In boats, construction, military vehicles, part rejuvenation, and tooling, significant opportunities are being industrialized. Aerospace, energy, and construction companies are investing in developing cell-based manufacturing solutions that combine additive with subtractive processes. In some of them it is the OEM, such as Formalloy, investing in syncing up tool paths, additive steps, part scanning, and material removal. In other scenarios, people are turning to Adaxis or AiBuild to do similar things, or write a job-specific code. Tens of thousands of turbine blisks and molds have already been repaired this way. Meanwhile, the applications are growing. In vehicle armor and boat building, cell-based manufacturing seems to have strategic implications for the US and other countries. If the boat UAV game grows, then boats must be made more efficiently. Surely a lot of the CAD CAM players will offer more additive features to meet this demand.

Users should see more features and time-saving workflows emerge from this hyperMILL CAD CAM package. For Adaxis and AiBuild, the CAD CAM crowd brings a lot of potential partners, and exits, to the table. Meanwhile, all are watching Autodesk Fusion, which aims to take over a lot of this functionality as well. Things are about to get very interesting in the CAD CAM world.