Solidworks. Easy and powerful up to medium sized assemblies. I'll bet in 4 hours you can off and running. Opens up all kinds of files, nice plugins etc. Very happening. I tried Alibre once but it was a little coarse, say like a 49' F100 with no shocks, in granny gear, on the pony express trail. Also one of their salesmen just would not leave me alone. Really tried to nag me into a sale. Calling and emailing daily. I chucked the demo into the trash. You might fare better and it's really cheap.

SW and MC

Millrunner has got drive. Somebody give this man a job. Hey Ron, aren't you looking for somebody? As far as getting into 5 axis I got into it just by changing jobs. Of course there was the inevitable aerospace layoff ("we just don't have the work.....")and 6 months of state funded lesiure time. Went back into medical and floated on up into mangement. 5 axis isn't all that hard. Approach and retract points/vectors are important, chip removal, pivot point offset, and tool presetting are just about all you need to really worry about. Get into Millturn when you can. Good luck

Are you bottoming out the form punch with the die? Don't do that. Float the strip or part and spring load the die section that makes the radius. Do you have die stops? Use them. Punch, part, and die must not act as a die stop. Your engineers are impractical. See it all the time. Sounds like they want to re-invent the wheel and hold the company hostage until it goes down in flames. To them, functional design is a new concept. I feel your pain. Throw them to the lions.

I love mori's. used to work with a mv45/40 with a Yasnac MX2. Random toolchanger -swell. On this machine you needed to input tool diameters in the setup page so the control would know what tools not to put next to each other. Large, small, large small...etc. used to chuck large tools right out of the pots and out into the shop floor. manual toolchange is another option.

oh! you are stamping aluminum. sorry, didn't pay attention to the post. well in that case, A2 is fine. M2 and D2 aren't necessary unless you are making millions of parts per run.

Camalot 1)-what material are you actually stamping? 2)-lot of breakage? once again what are you stamping? In any case check punch and die clearance, punch and die sharpness, slug draft clearance, lubrication, condition of leader pins and bushings, press alignment. Are you using a feeder? check it's progression. Are your operators any good? check them too.