"When management chose CADKEY ten years ago, they were looking at all sorts of systems. This one just had the most cluck for the buck", stated Randy Cloud, Manufacturing Process and Design Engineer of Criterion Machine Works.

"I am happy they chose CADKEY over the other systems they evaluated. We have users of other popular CAD systems who watch me design on the computer, and say 'Is that all you have to do?' for a particular task. I always tell them, yeah, it's a mechanical package, not something that tries to be a jack of all trades and master of none. CADKEY has made great strides in CAD technology, and it is a real pleasure to use."

"A lot of the tools we make have ellipses, conic hyperbolas and convoluted spline shapes because of the cuts we make across cones at intersecting planes. Without solids, it would be a real tough challenge. With CADKEY, it's more like taking a hot knife to butter and just cutting into the cones. I get a precise shape, and when the shop builds it, it looks identical to my electronic model," he added.

Criterion Machine Works has cut the time in turning its boring tools by two-thirds. Cloud says the company owes this to an indispensable component used in their manufacturing process - the Flip-Flop fixture. When Cloud first conceptualized the device in 1989, he wanted a fixture that could hold the bar stock in place while CNC lathes cut away concentric shapes from the material, back the turret away, and then shift to hold the part for eccentric turning. This would bring the entire process of cutting a piece of bar stock onto a single machine.

The fixture eluded the engineering staff of Criterion. It seemed possible, but creating the complex curves and radical joints with paper drafting proved nigh on the impossible. Models failed to work properly.

Then the answer came. Criterion purchased one of the first 3D CAD programs on the market, CADKEY software, in 1989. Cloud's first project on the software was a 3D-wireframe model of the fixture. The learning curve took him two months at the time, and when he completed the design, he had a fixture that would do the job.

"The fixture had maybe fifty parts in it," Cloud said. "I was able to draw individual pieces on individual levels, then turn on the levels and see where I had conflicts. We consequently built the fixture and it worked right out of the box, first time. We used it for almost ten years before it wore out." The fixture has manufactured 50,000 to 70,000 boring tools a year throughout its lifespan.

Now Cloud has designed an improved version of the Flip-Flop using the latest CADKEY software, a program that incorporates solid-modeling features. It only took him two weeks with the new software. The knew Flip-Flop will be lighter, tougher, and faster.

"We use CADKEY for everything… for designing flyers, for line drawings in our catalog, and for creating routing sheets on the shop floor to show the steps in the progress of the part through the shop." Cloud said.