Different Software needed to Operate a CNC Plasma Cutting Table - Tips and Tricks with Jim Colt
In this episode, Jim Colt, an industry veteran from Hypertherm, talks about the different types of software needed to operate a CNC plasma cutting machine. Visit https://www.maverickcnc.com/ for more information on all of our plasma cutting tables.
The 3 basic software packages that every CNC cutting table needs are...
1. CAD (Computer-Aided Design/Drafting)
2. CAM (Computer-Aided Manufacturing)
3. CNC (Machine Control Software)
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Video description :
Hi, Jim from Hypertherm. I wanted to talk just a few minutes about the software requirements because on especially on a light industrial CNC cutting table but actually any CNC plasma cutting table has similar software requirements. There are different software maybe you’d use on a shipyard production floor verses a small fabrication shop production floor. We won’t really get into those but we’ll talk about the three basic software packages of every CNC cutting table needs. CAD, CAM and machine control software.
So let’s talk about each one individually, the CAD software is CAD, CAD stands for Computer Aided Design or Computer Aided Drafting depending on who’s talking about it. So what CAD is, is actually just a drawing of the part you want to cut ultimately. So that’s done on a computer using almost any CAD software. Many of these machines come with CAD software that’s really designed more specifically for cutting applications where a universal CAD software might be designed for machine shops, operations or home building or something along that line. It’s really best to have a CAD that was designed for the application your going to use it for. So CAD is a digital file of the drawing with dimensions and all that stuff for the part you want to cut.
Next is CAM software and CAM stands for Computer Aided Manufacturing or Computer Assisted Manufacturing. What CAM actually does is actually takes that CAD drawing that you have of the desired part to cut and converts it into code, something called machine code and what the code actually does is it tells all the components on the machine such as the drive motors, the plasma cutter, the torch height control – tells them when to activate, what speed to go at, what direction to turn.
Then the Machine Control Software, basically the software that takes that machine code from the CAM software and converts it into electrical signals and the electrical signals that go to each of the drive motors to start the plasma cutter and things like that. So CAD/CAM and Machine Control Software – part of every CNC plasma cutting table and there are a lot of variations of them, make sure you look at that and understand before you buy your table.