Dorian Tool

For more than 20 years, Dorian Tool in East Bernard, Texas, has been developing solutions aimed at making life for machinist more accurate, more productive and more simplified. They have established a global reputation for developing quality lathe and milling accessories, turning and milling indexable tools, internal/external threading tools, and quick change and indexable  tooling systems.

Recently, Dorian Tool executives began looking for CAM programming software that would be as innovative, work saving, and dedicated to ease-of-use as the company’s products were.  It was time for a change from the repetitive, error-prone, time-consuming process of entering tooling designs by hand.

Dorian Tool President, Enrico Giannetti, contacted three CAM resellers and asked them to program his part. One said no, and another asked for a day to do it. Jason Heyse from Texas Offline, however, sat down and took less than a half hour to do the program. “He didn’t try to sell me.  He just showed how simple it was to operate the program”. Giannetti said.  “When I mentioned that I no longer had a programmer, Jason said ‘You give me a machinist, and in one week I can teach him how to program.’” That was enough to persuade Giannetti to purchase a seat of VirtualGibbs, the  offline version of GibbsCAM.

That machinist turned out to be Humberto Giron, an 11-year employee that Giannetti had watched grow into a fine  machinist. Giron, who did not know anything about computers, took the three day class and then purchased a PC for himself so he could practice more at home. In a short time he was programming a job a day, now he does five or six jobs a day.

The benefits of using the new software  became apparent right away. Donnie Kelner, the company’s engineering manager, first took note of it by the stories he was not hearing.  “The machinist were strangely silent,” he states. “There used to be a lot of grumbling about how long it took to get a part from programming, using the old  system. Then all of the sudden, no complaints.”   Before, the engineers had to create many complex prints for the CNC programmer. Now, with GibbsCAM, it’s easy to import the engineers CAD files and create the CNC program much quicker. 

Dorian makes use of a number of  Virtual Gibbs features. Solids Import allows them to import directly from the CAD program while Cut Part Rendering gives them the 3-D image so they can verify every detail before cutting.   Error-Free Posts is Giron’s favorite feature.  With no G-code editing at the controller, they can post-process jobs at any machine on Dorian’s shop floor. Kelner appreciates the Associativity, which  recalculates all associated toolpaths  whenever changes are made to part geometry, tooling or machining parameters.

GibbsCAM is now playing a key role in the growth plans of Dorian Tool. “We’re trying to become much more aggressive in the industry,” says Kelner. “To accomplish this, we have to be able to make the highest grade of products at the lowest cost.  Just based on time savings and reduced scrap alone, GibbsCAM helps us to do that.”

Complete article can be found in Modern        Applications, February 2001