Knife tips on ring debarkers face relentless abrasion in mill environments, so durability and fast turnaround matter.
Nicholson Manufacturing looked for a way to combine subtractive accuracy with additive flexibility in one controlled workflow, driven from a single CAM environment.
The aim was to standardise how hard-surfaced tips are built, reduce manual hand-offs on the shop floor, and keep programmers firmly in control of machine motion without adding complexity.
Client Snapshot
Nicholson Manufacturing Ltd. designs and builds ring debarkers for lumber facilities worldwide and is headquartered in Sidney, British Columbia, Canada.
The company manufactures and supports multiple debarker models and maintains roughly 100 knife part numbers to meet ongoing replacement demand.
Its knives and tips work in extreme conditions that punish wear surfaces and expose any inconsistency in build quality.
The Challenge
The knife tip is the business end of a debarker and must stay incredibly tough and hard despite constant contact with rotating logs.
Nicholson needed a repeatable way to build these wear surfaces while keeping programming cycles manageable.
The team also required precise axis control and an approach that would work inside the existing Mastercam environment to avoid disjointed workflows between additive and subtractive steps.
The Solution
Nicholson implemented a hybrid workflow that runs additive and subtractive toolpaths in one place.
Mastercam Multiaxis and 3+2 strategies handle positioning on a Haas VF7, while the APlus add-on drives directed energy deposition, including when to fire the laser and how much powder to deliver.
A deposition head is selected like any other tool, so operators can move from cutting to printing without leaving the setup or juggling separate files.
One programme and one G-code file run the full job, from machining fixtures to additive layering to finish cuts.
Results
Programming time dropped from days to hours, which compounds quickly when producing thousands of knife tips each year.
The hybrid approach tightened axis control, reduced hand-offs, and gave programmers more creative freedom than prior additive software allowed.
Hard-surfacing is applied where needed, and the same setup completes the finish machining for consistent, durable tips.
“Now we have axis control, which is incredible. With the combination of additive and subtractive technology, we’ve really subverted the fundamental laws of manufacturing: better, faster, cheaper. We used to have to pick two. Well, I’m not picking two. We’re having all three.”
Jay Hale, Mechanical Designer & Draftsman, Nicholson Manufacturing Ltd.
Why It Matters
For manufacturers building wear-critical components, programming additive and subtractive in one CAM environment compresses lead times and improves repeatability without retraining entire teams.
Because APlus is integrated within Mastercam, shops keep established workflows and simulation while gaining deposition control for DED.
The Bottom Line
Nicholson’s project shows how hybrid manufacturing becomes practical when additive is programmed alongside machining.
With Mastercam Multiaxis strategies, APlus additive toolpaths, and a Haas VF7, the shop unified its process, tightened axis control, and standardised hard-surfaced tip production.
If durability, programming effort, or process control are bottlenecks, consider evaluating Mastercam with APlus to explore a single-program workflow for hybrid parts.
Next step: Book a discovery call or request a Mastercam Multi-Axis demo.
Content adapted from the original case study published by Mastercam.
