IKV Tools in Forsheda, Sweden is one of the country's leading toolmakers with customers in the automotive, telecom, leisure and white goods industries. Highly customized cutting and bending tools for boards are manufactured and to a large extent, each tool that leaves IKV Tools is unique.

Building in the strategy IKV Tools has been a SolidWorks user for many years and has recently purchased EdgeCAM Strategy Manager from Pathtrace, allowing them to facilitate consistent quality and time reduction across the production floor by drawing up their own production procedures and building them into the work strategy. This procedural knowledge is built in to a customizable flowchart; graphically depicting how all parts will be machined. IKV tools have said they can easily expect to reduce the production of tool boards from four hours to 30 minutes. With a production of 60 boards per year, this translates to a savings of 27.5 working days. EdgeCAM Strategy Manager is not written in complex macros and there is no need for a database of processes.

Better collaboration
"EdgeCAM has meant that we work together more efficiently", explains MD and co-owner Ingvar Johansson. "Before the purchase of EdgeCAM Strategy Manager, the design and production departments worked in isolation, drafting drawings to suit each condition. "

EdgeCAM Strategy Manager allows us to program what tool capacity each of our machines have and forewarns the designers if they have chosen hole dimensions using tools we don't have, for example. This means that, as early as the design stage, we can optimize the job. I don't need to change tools in the machine when I get a drawing, as the program has already taken our conditions into consideration. This saves a lot of time over and above pure programming time."

Fewer errors
EdgeCAM's associativity is not limited to just loading information. When working on a SolidWorks part in EdgeCAM, if the design is altered on a networked computer, the EdgeCAM designer is warned that the part has changed. This allows the programmer to save his work and gives him the option of using the latest part. The risk of working on an out-of-date part is vastly reduced.

EdgeCAM has a fully supported launcher inside SolidWorks, requiring no "add-ins" or third party software. When the file is opened in EdgeCAM it is not translated, as it uses the same Parasolid kernel. This means that no data is lost or needs to be redrawn. EdgeCAM has the power to load assemblies, construction planes and thread information from the SolidWorks model.

Less vulnerable organisation
Simplification of the work means that more staff can cope with jobs, which previously demanded specialist knowledge. "With EdgeCAM more members of our staff learn to program correctly. After three days of training, a large section of the personnel should be able to run the program. There is always someone who is able to keep the production running," says co-owner Clas Magnusson.