Event scale: VUE 2026 brought around 60 attendees to the Silverstone Museum in the UK in September 2026.
- Software gains: Vericut 9.7 delivers performance improvements of 10-40%, with expanded AI assistance and enhanced tooling management.
- Beyond collision checks: Stoneswood builds Vericut sessions from shop-floor set-up documentation and uses cycle-time estimates for production planning.
- Post-processor tooling: Icam Post V27 adds AI-powered assistance, regression testing and enhanced debugging tools.
The Vericut Users' Exchange (VUE) returned to the UK in September 2026, drawing around 60 attendees to the Silverstone Museum, adjacent to the Silverstone Formula 1 Circuit. The day mixed technical sessions with a customer keynote that gave engineers something genuinely useful to take home: a working template for verifying advanced machining processes digitally before they ever reach the shop floor.
What's new in the software
Gavin Powell, Managing Director of Vericut UK, welcomed delegates before Gavin Bridger, Applications Engineering Manager, opened the technical programme. Attendees also heard that capabilities including Vericut Assistant and bidirectional connectivity with Siemens' Run MyVirtual Machine (RMVM) digital-twin platform are already available.
Verification as a planning tool
The keynote came from Tom Whitbread, Technical Engineer at Stoneswood Precision Components, the Cheshire-based aerostructures specialist that is part of Hyde Aero Products. His message cut against a common assumption about simulation software.
We want to show how we're using Vericut for more than simply checking whether a toolpath is going to collide.
Stoneswood's Vericut sessions are built using the same documentation issued to shop-floor operators. Fixture selection, component position, work offsets, tooling assemblies and machine configuration are all checked against the set-up sheet — so a discrepancy between the documented set-up and the Vericut session can be investigated before the job reaches the machine. The company also feeds Vericut's cycle-time estimates back to its planning department to inform production scheduling and machine capacity decisions.
The company's programming workflow starts in hyperMILL CAM software, with Icam providing post-processing before Vericut independently verifies the resulting NC code. Stoneswood uses Icam to develop bespoke post-processing functionality — including controlling specific C-axis table orientations. Whitbread illustrated the point with a component approximately 2.3 m long machined within a working envelope of around 1.6 m, made possible by controlling table rotations and then independently simulating the resulting machine behaviour.
Interpolation turning, verified
The most striking example was interpolation turning on the company's DMGMORI DMC series machining centres, which enables the production of turned features through coordinated machine movement rather than a transfer to a conventional turning operation.
It's one thing to know that the machine can perform a particular function. It's another to make sure we can program it, post-process it and independently verify what the machine's going to do before we press start.
Stoneswood used hyperMILL's general turning functionality to create the toolpaths, then developed bespoke post-processing logic in Icam to translate the output and utilise DMGMORI's CYCLE806 functionality. The Vericut environment was developed to interpret the posted code and accurately reproduce the process on both machine configurations.
That's the real outcome for us. We haven't just made interpolation turning possible on the machine; we've brought it into a process where we can understand and prove the behaviour before manufacturing begins.
Post-processing and practical takeaways
After lunch — and a tour of the Silverstone Museum courtesy of Vericut UK — Gavin Bridger demonstrated Icam Post V27, the latest release of which includes AI-powered assistance, regression testing and enhanced debugging tools to support post-processor development and validation. The day closed with a Vericut tips session and expert-led round tables.
Vericut, part of CGTech — established in 1988 and headquartered in Irvine, California — specialises in NC/CNC simulation, verification, optimisation, post-processing and analysis software. Its software is used by companies of different sizes in all industries. For more information, visit the company's website or call +44 (0)1273 773538.
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