Blackpoint Engineering invents and supplies a broad line of original paintball accessories for the industry. Soon, they will also be offering military combat paintball guns. Blackpoint needed to figure out how a small but growing company could stay competitive in the sports world, and also determine how to meet the demanding needs of the sporting industry.
Steve Wygant, programmer at Blackpoint says, “When you’re small, you need to find a big advantage that is very efficient. Wygant found out quickly that Mastercam products were very easy to use and produced the big results they needed.
Running an entire job at a single feed rate reduces efficiency. Running that same job at varying rates can save time, tool wear, and money. Mastercam optimizes toolpaths based on the volume of material to be removed, and the machine tool limitations to give varied feed rates tailored to each job. Says Wygant, “How could I not like the intelligence of Mastercam’s feed rate Optimization or the inherent efficiency of a software package built upon full associativity.”
Blackpoint is looking now at improving their quick response design capability. Their current system for modifying custom parts was like drudgery. It seemed as though today’s customers were requesting modifications for more and more parts on an accelerated schedule. At the same time, Blackpoint was expanding its own new product development program.
Wygant discovered that Mastercam Solids would allow them to import, create, and program their solid models in the same easy-to-use interface that Mastercam Mill had. Blackpoint could import Parasolids, SAT, and Inventor files as solids, surfaces, and/or wireframes. They can also export Parasolids and SAT files. Another nice feature Mastercam offered was the ability to open SolidWorks and Solid Edge files directly into Mastercam.
Mastercam also offers full associativity between design, engineering, solid model, and toolpath. This allows you to make changes to your solid model, and in one click of the mouse, you get an updated toolpath. This software helped Blackpoint implement engineering genius. After Blackpoint purchased Mastercam Solids, they could go from design to machine ten times faster than ever before. What once took them weeks to do, now only takes days. |