In 1973, Akkerman Inc. began providing tunnel boring machines to meet the needs of the trenchless market. Today Akkerman Inc. sells and leases new and used microtunneling, pipejacking, guided boring andearth pressure balance equipment. Akkerman not only manufactures quality trenchless equipment, they have built a reputation for superior reliability and responsive service.

The screenshot from GibbsCAM’s Flash CPR (Cut Part Rendering) toolpath verification feature depicts the machining of two bearing cage sections.

Weatherford International Ltd. is one of the largest global providers of products and services that span the drilling, evaluation, completion, production and intervention cycles of oil and natural gas wells. Weatherford is a new breed of service company—one that can provide the industry with extended products and services, more efficient operations, more powerful research and development capabilities and greater geographic diversity.

GibbsCAM can create or import accurate representations of all machine tool components, tooling and fixtures, and combine them with models of castings for programming and machine simulation.

Drill Faster. Run Harder. Work Smarter. That’s Center Rock Inc.’s motto. Their customers all have the same goal - get the job done as safely and as efficiently as possible. More and more are choosing Center Rock products to help get the job done right.

Center Rock manufactures and distributes a complete line of air drilling tools and products. At their state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania, they build stock and made-to-order products that are used by leading drilling, oil and gas, foundation and construction, roadway, and mining contractors across North America, Europe, Asia, Russia, and Australia.

Center Rock’s Plan B for the Chilean Miner Rescue was to manufacture a Low Profile (LP) Hole Opener drills – which were produced with machine tools programmed with GibbsCAM – shortening the rescue effort by two and a half months.

TRATEK specializes in providing the surgical community with diverse implantable systems engineered to exceed standards of performance and simplicity of use. Their highly experienced team of professionals enable them to minimize turnaround time by performing all manufacturing processes onsite. This centralized concept allows them to deliver high quality craftsmanship and cost competitive products.

GibbsCAM generating 5-axis toolpath for finishing fillets and radii of orthopedic plate.

The mark of a successful job shop is the ability to meet and exceed client needs, whatever the project on the floor. KDM Oilfield Manufacturing of Nisku, Alberta, went a step above and beyond that when it invested in a new 5-axis machine to help a client get out of a bind. To speed the success of that contract, the company invested in GibbsCAM software, which helped them get up and running on the new machine in short order.

KDM has been serving oil and gas drilling contractors for a little more than four years. The company’s 15 employees, four CNC lathes and 10,000 square foot facility has primarily serviced equipment and built subcomponents for those drilling contractors, working in 4145 alloy steel.

This drill bit was created using the application of a 5-axis toolpath in GibbsCAM. GibbsCAM helped speed the process up when KDM was approached with the opportunity to find a new source for drill bits, as long as they were able to respond quickly to their supply requests.

Well-honed CNC programming skills and automated programming of multi-task machines (MTM) have enabled Sunnen Products Company (St. Louis) to increase production for two of its complex tool families. Sunnen is a manufacturer and distributor of bore-sizing and finishing equipment, engine-rebuilding equipment, and tooling and abrasives for global markets. Its equipment is used in precision industry applications as diverse as hydraulics, cylinder liners, small engines, gears, and oil-and-gas industry components.

GibbsCAM Cut Part Rendering verifies toolpath automatically generated by the custom plug-in. Different colors can be used for each operation, especially when the toolpath wraps around cylindrical parts.

Based in Norfolk, Nebraska, Norfolk Specialties makes emergency-replacement parts for foreign-made, outdated or unsupported equipment in various industries, including medical, food, rubber and steel. For this 14-man shop, a typical job involves reverse engineering a broken component to produce one or two parts with fast turnaround.

Over 50 pounds of material was removed by plunge roughing this 31.5” x 7” x 3” shear cone, in preparation for six subsequent operations. The roughing stage often became a bottleneck, particularly on parts with irregular shapes. With GibbsCAM’s plunge roughing, however, they were able to overcome that challenge. They have cut on-machine time in half and quadrupled tool life.

Founded in 1967, Nash Community College is a public two-year post secondary educational institution. The Machining Technology program, established in 1989, has but one mission: to provide students with the highest quality of manual and CNC machining in Eastern North Carolina. Currently the machining program enrolls 55 students throughout the curriculum. Students can obtain a degree, diploma or certificate in Machining Technology, as well as a certificate in CNC Machining. From manual to 5-Axis simultaneous machining, NCC provides students with an educational opportunity that is second to none.

Although this brass air nozzle has no industrial use, instructors use it to teach the advantages of 5-Axis machining in the MEC 232 (Computer Aided Manufacturing II) course. Each year, students make ten of these nozzles, which incorporate both 5-Axis positioning and 5-Axis simultaneous machining in a single part.

Big Dog Garage, is The Tonight Show host Jay Leno’s passion and playground where his crew keeps vehicles roadworthy. The 77,000 square foot facility houses 200 machines, including vintage and modern cars and motorcycles, two stationary steam engines, and a 17,000 square foot shop that includes a full kitchen where the owner occasionally cooks for the staff. The garage also serves as experimental proving ground for environmentally friendly products and practices, testing biodiesel, generating electricity from solar cells and wind turbines, and selling excess power to the grid.

This part is the lower sleeve of a steam governor on an 1831 stationary steam engine, the oldest machine in the garage. In operation, two 15-pound steel ball flyweights hang, diametrically opposed, off the lower sleeve. The original sleeve had been repaired several times, but it kept breaking. GibbsCAM Solid Modeling allowed Big Dog Garage to create a replacement part and make modifications to improve aesthetics.

Star Metal Products is an ISO 9001:2000 Certified manufacturer of complex machined components and products for diverse industrial market sectors. Highly recognized as a leader in the cold-forming industry, Star Metal has expanded its machining capabilities to include products for aerospace, medical, electrical, automotive and other precision machining industries.

This part is a Cold Nutformer Transfer Finger, used for high speed transfers in the fastener industry in thousands of different configurations; all of which are short run lots. Using GibbsCAM allows Star Metal Products to easily program all of the different angles for the transfer finger all in one setup. Last year, the 50 employee shop output more than 39,000 different products. GibbsCAM’s edit-free G-code output made this possible.