NX or Hypermill for 5 axis

The company I work for has agreed to buy new software. I have pretty much narrowed it down to NX, and Hypermill. The kind of work we are doing is making 737 flight control parts that are no longer available from Boeing, so we usually don't make more than one part, maybe two or three. We are using OneCNC Xr5 right now, and it doesn't really do what we need. I'm using a Haas VF2-TR,and we are looking for a new, much larger 5 axis machining center. I would like to hear from people who are using either NX or Hypermill. I am curious about the NC code based simulation they are both supposed to have, and what getting postprocessors is like, since I'm not sure what our next machine will be.

I would still recommend Vericut for NC Verification. There are a lot of things that self checking software will not catch.

Off topic... but just thinking about the sort of invoice you get when you order an out of production aircraft part that was 5 axis machined on-demand for you... bejesus!

Larry Dickman said:

I would still recommend Vericut for NC Verification. There are a lot of things that self checking software will not catch.

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I agree (but not necessarily about Vericut). You need a program to read back your posted code and show you what's really going to happen. The simulation in your CAM software doesn't read posted code, so it's not 100% reliable.

We use this: Roboris

Eureka is about 1/3 the cost of Vericut and is faster to use (based off of a demo I did with Vericut a number of years ago).

As for CAM, have you considered WorkNC? If you haven't, you might want to take a look.

WorkNC | CAD CAM Software for 2 to 5 axis machining, CNC Programming for surface & solid models in mold & die

Good luck with your decision.

Dan

Dan B said:

The simulation in your CAM software doesn't read posted code, so it's not 100% reliable.

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To be fair, NX has both CAM driven simulation for helping with the programming, but also has full G-code machine simulation as an option (that is competitively priced with similar software from 3rd parties). Upside is that it's all tightly integrated and configured and easy to fire off a simulation. Downside is that some folks might want some philosophical separation between church and state, by having another developer's software doing the verification.

Dan B said:

I agree (but not necessarily about Vericut). You need a program to read back your posted code and show you what's really going to happen. The simulation in your CAM software doesn't read posted code, so it's not 100% reliable.

We use this: Roboris

Eureka is about 1/3 the cost of Vericut and is faster to use (based off of a demo I did with Vericut a number of years ago).

As for CAM, have you considered WorkNC? If you haven't, you might want to take a look.

WorkNC | CAD CAM Software for 2 to 5 axis machining, CNC Programming for surface & solid models in mold & die

Good luck with your decision.

Dan

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Thanks for the tip, I will look into WorkNC, and Roboris. I thought that both Hypermill and NX had G code driven simulation as an option, but I could be wrong, I haven't talked to the salesmen much.

gkoenig said:

Off topic... but just thinking about the sort of invoice you get when you order an out of production aircraft part that was 5 axis machined on-demand for you... bejesus!

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It's probably nowhere near as bad as you might think. We make the parts pretty cheaply as part of a contract for millions of dollars of maintenence, so we don't really need to make money off the machining. They still charge a whole lot more than I get payed.

TRussell said:

Thanks for the tip, I will look into WorkNC, and Roboris. I thought that both Hypermill and NX had G code driven simulation as an option, but I could be wrong, I haven't talked to the salesmen much.

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NX has G code verification AND full machine integrated simulation and Verification

NC-code simulation in NX CAM - YouTube

I can highly recommend this guy for NX post processors, machines models for simulation etc.

I can't rate HyperMill highly enough for 5 axis. I have free choice of my CAM seat and know there isn't much that could be thrown at me, that would faze me.

The NC code checker on Hypermill is new and I haven't seen it running. Though I have never felt the need for it. The posts are always spot on and have never felt the need for double checking the code and I've programmed some pretty expensive machines.

TRussell said:

The company I work for has agreed to buy new software. I have pretty much narrowed it down to NX, and Hypermill. The kind of work we are doing is making 737 flight control parts that are no longer available from Boeing, so we usually don't make more than one part, maybe two or three. We are using OneCNC Xr5 right now, and it doesn't really do what we need. I'm using a Haas VF2-TR,and we are looking for a new, much larger 5 axis machining center. I would like to hear from people who are using either NX or Hypermill. I am curious about the NC code based simulation they are both supposed to have, and what getting postprocessors is like, since I'm not sure what our next machine will be.

Click to expand...

Both are great options. More directly though..

Post processors and simulation from Openmind have been bulletproof, and were available for all of our machines on day one. While the simulation isn't truly g-code simulation, we've not had a single instance where simulation didn't match executed code.

I can't say the same about NX- Posts for some of our machines were easy to come by, and others required some development. In the basic 5-axis realm, that wasn't too bad, and g-code simulation has always closely-but not always perfectly- matched. It's more of a work in progress. The thing with g-code simulation is, the simulation is only as good as the effort someone puts in to make sure the behavior is correct, there's nothing necessarily superior about it.

But.. none of this is to say that NX is inferior, or anything along those lines. It's a great package, and when leveraged in the right environment, I think it's tough to beat. The same is also true of Hypermill, so figuring out where they fit is pretty crucial.

Specifically, the CAD in Hypermill (HyperCADs) is shit. It's fine if you're importing a model, maybe doing some basic fixture work.. But it's dumb, history-less and essentially not suitable for doing CAD work. In this way, Hypermill and NX couldn't be further apart. By comparison Hypermill is incredibly shallow. NX is one of the deeper pieces of software out there, and that depth is either crucially important or a ton of unnecessary overhead, and it's difficult to assess which without fairly thorough insight into the work you're doing.