Amount of Material Removed

[s_berg]

Hello,

 

New to the forum and CNC milling.

For a cost report for Formula SAE one requirement is to calculate the amount (in cm) of material removal.  I know where to locate the Path Length (rapid/feed) and the like but i am looking for a quicker way to calculate the amount removed as I have 14 blocks of MDF machined for an under-tray. Although it is symmetrical side to side, each block (7 of them) I will have to calculate the approx material removed.

 

Any help on this?

 

Thanks

[Dave Allen]

You can use analyze volume of any solid part and calc the drifference from the stock volume to get material removal.

 

Click analyze, volume/area, solid properties then click you solid model.

[s_berg]

WoW! That was easy..  Ever looked at something and looked past what you were looking for?! Lol.

 

Thank you Sir!

[Dave Allen]

[s_berg]

If the part is not drawn up as a FULL solid (see attached), is there anyway to complete the analysis?  This is 1/14th of the under-tray model to clarify.  Part was drawn up in Creo 3.0 thickened, merged and imported as an IGES surfaces and imported to Mastercam with surfaces and wire frame.  On one thought, I just tried to import in solids with the IGES but still the problem occurs like there is no solids in the import.

 

Ideas or am I SOL and have to do it manually?

[Dave Allen]

I would create a solid model.

[s_berg]

This is true but proves very difficult with the amount of contours it has, at least in Creo.  I have not used other softwares.  

 

In the meantime last night I just broke down the blocks into approximate amounts of material left times the cm^3 divided by the height divided by depth of cut and then times the length to get the linear cm of tool path.  For now this will have to work.

 

BUT I appreciate the help.  Thanks!

[djstedman]

One method you could use if you have your data for the size of your original stock's volume.. would be the following.

 

Run the part in verify and then save the STL file..

 

There is a free program out there called Meshlab, you can install it and then it has a function you can use to calculate the volume of a STL file.

 

Once installed, just open MeshLab, and open the STL saved from verify

 

First make sure to use View -> Show Layer Dialog to display the layer info panel..

 

Then do Filters -> Quality, Measure And Computations -> Compute Geometric Measures

 

Once you do that it is very simple to take your original volume minus your saved stl's volume and the result will be the volume of the amount of stock removed.