Randy Roller, CAD/CAM Tooling Team Lead at Major Tool and Machine, an Indianapolis-based manufacturing company, shares how they are using CAM Assist to get faster, on the sidelines of the IMTS 2026 conference in Chicago.
Q: Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Randy Roller. I work at Major Tool Machine out of Indianapolis, and I am the CAD/CAM tooling team lead for the company. We're a contract machine shop, and we make very large parts for the aerospace, Navy, power generation, and semiconductor industries.
Q: How long have you been using CAM Assist?
We've been using CAM Assist for almost 2 years, not quite. We were specifically looking for some software to help our programmers speed up and make their job easier.
Q: How does CAM Assist help you?
The one thing that has been really good is that it helps our programmers lay toolpaths down, which is kind of the mundane process of programming. It helps them be able to lay down some toolpaths, and you can look at those and then decide, "Well, I like these toolpaths, but maybe I don't need this one. Change this one up."
It really helps them out by helping reduce their workload. It also helps our guys challenge themselves to work outside the box. Since AI does a lot of the toolpaths, how can I use some of these toolpaths and apply them to the product that I'm trying to program?
Q: Who is using it?
I had a small pilot group of 4 guys that I used first to use this software, and they dove into it. Here recently, we just expanded that to the rest of my team, so I've got 8 people on this right now.
Q: What are the benefits?
I would say the time savings potential in the next year or 2 is 50% to 75%, which is my goal. We see the potential in this software from where it was a year ago to where it is now to where it's going to be in a year from now, and we want to be on that cutting edge. We have to be on that cutting edge to be competitive.
