SolidCAM is Flexible.
“SolidCAM gives us more flexibility in what we can do for our customers,” says Bud Hanna, owner of SCP Plastics, Inc. When Hanna took over the injection molding shop in 1999, the Booneville-MS mold-maker still ran on technology dating back to 1966, the year the company was founded. And at that time, not even a computer could be found. Hanna reinvested over the next four years in 4 CNC milling machines, including the computers and software to run them: SolidCAM and SolidWorks, which he implemented a year and a half ago.
Among the many flexible features of SolidCAM – including the ability to propagate changes to a CAD model to all parts already in production – Hanna believes that the effortless CAD-to-CAM automation in SolidCAM has allowed SCP Plastics to have premier design-build plastic molding capabilities. “We designed and built a 10-tool program for a very large end user,” explains Hanna, who estimates the job would normally take ten weeks. “We had the ten tools in milling machines in under four weeks.”
SolidCAM not only updated the fabricator’s capabilities, “it put us ahead in toolbuilding for our customers.” “SolidCAM has made us competitive globally in tool building,” Says Hanna. “I honestly feel like I can compete with offshore toolmaking operations as a result of this software. If you can compete globally, then the playing field is level.”
