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Cylindrical part with radial pocket that has a cylindrical floor. How?


huskermcdoogle
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Ok, so in all my time programming I have never had to accomplish such a seemingly common and simple task...  I know how to rough it, I know of ways to finish it, but what I am asking, is for what is the best way to finish the floor to provide the best result? 

Ball end?  Small Endmill?  Endmill with no dish?

I'm kinda shooting in the dark here using theory with no prior experience.  Walls, no problem, roughing, no problem.  But the floor....  My brain says it will be faceted and look like chit no matter what I do unless I surface it with a ball.

I have no idea what the function is for these parts, so I can't comment as to how good a floor finish we will need.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

 

Cylindrical_Sample.mcam

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Typically, I use a ball end mill, do a waterline toolpath first, then a scallop.  Sometimes, depending on how much of the radius there is on the floor, you can get away with a scallop only.  Typically when I use scallop like this, I will work outside to inside.  But I also consider myself a newbie, even though I've been doing this almost 5 years now.  

 

And I know that Hybrid, and Equal Scallop will probably work well too.  They take me longer to process.

 

Brent

 

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11 hours ago, huskermcdoogle said:

unless I surface it with a ball.

You really don't have a choice but to finish it with a ball if you need anything resembling a decent finish.....you can use a bullnose but that creates other blending issues..and a flat mill is a non-starter.

I would use a larger ball to get most of the center area, then a could smaller balls to blend it closer to the wall...

Finishing that square corner at the base of the wall.....I'd want to know whats' the largest rad I could get there, square corners and multi-axis cuts don't generally create the best cuts...

But again, all depends of what's required for finish....

 

As far as finishing the floor, you have a TON of options...multi-surface, 5 axis flow, parallel, morph between curves, a standard flowline, SF Parallel, SF Raster...all kinds of options

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Thanks JP.  I figured I'd end up having to go after it with a ball.  Not terribly worried about finding a method now knowing that.  Definitely not my first rodeo doing a little bit of rotary finish surface machining.  Now if only I had a 5 axis post for the machine I'm working with.  Stuck with a 4 axis post for now.  I suppose I could add the functionality I need relatively easily, but not sure it will be worth the time as I don't plan on doing much programming for this customer, and to top it off they still don't have any CAM software yet, nor does it appear they plan to actually buy anything soon.  They are a Mazatrol turning shop through and through, and only have one mill 99% of the time to support the lathes.

2 hours ago, JParis said:

Finishing that square corner at the base of the wall.....I'd want to know whats' the largest rad I could get there, square corners and multi-axis cuts don't generally create the best cuts...

There is no square corner between the wall and floor, I just deleted it to get my geo for unrolling... and never added it back...  It's an .060 rad.

   

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Flat ground bottom bull endmill with the .06R using the Multi axis Roughing, but as a finish operation and call it a day. Might do with the biggest endmill you want to use then come back with a .187 and work with the corners or use a .187 x .06R, but that would be a lot of extra work you could eliminate by using a larger one then come back with a small one.

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6 minutes ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

Flat ground bottom bull endmill with the .06R using the Multi axis Roughing, but as a finish operation and call it a day. Might do with the biggest endmill you want to use then come back with a .187 and work with the corners or use a .187 x .06R, but that would be a lot of extra work you could eliminate by using a larger one then come back with a small one.

Do you have a particular flat ground tool in mind?

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28 minutes ago, huskermcdoogle said:

Do you have a particular flat ground tool in mind?

Sandvik makes them now. Do a search on their website for it. Your OP3 pocket would do the same thing. I would switch it to parallel spiral inside to out and your good to go. Nice toolpaths and work I like seeing people using Axis sub like you did how I have done it for years.

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here is a video on how i would toolpath that through mastercam. I used Along Curve and Swarf to machine the floor and with a good tool like ron mentioned above it would probably leave a nice finish if we keep the cut direction cutting with the rotary instead of cutting along the X. 

https://fastechincorporated-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/support_fastechinc_net/EZNv-DGm3mVNmOamNGBwrO0BfC71qnbkMeNduiQ9QkYn1Q?e=6FrLPY

the video should play right in a browser since its on my one drive or it can be downloaded. lots of other paths work too but this is how i would get that done with multi-axis. you might need to give it a couple minutes in the browser to load before it'll start playing.

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50 minutes ago, JoshC said:

here is a video on how i would toolpath that through mastercam. I used Along Curve and Swarf to machine the floor and with a good tool like ron mentioned above it would probably leave a nice finish if we keep the cut direction cutting with the rotary instead of cutting along the X. 

https://fastechincorporated-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/support_fastechinc_net/EZNv-DGm3mVNmOamNGBwrO0BfC71qnbkMeNduiQ9QkYn1Q?e=6FrLPY

the video should play right in a browser since its on my one drive or it can be downloaded. lots of other paths work too but this is how i would get that done with multi-axis. you might need to give it a couple minutes in the browser to load before it'll start playing.

Josh compare code from the Multiaxis toolpaths and from Axis sub and see the huge difference in the code. Then run each on a machine and see which one runs nicer and faster. Thank you for the suggestion and great to see it, but I have used Axis sub for years in some instances instead of the Moduleworks toolpaths because they have no filtering ability. When they get filtering finally added then they are starting to get with the program. I am still against a ton of code is better for arcs verses a smaller amount of code. 2 lines of code on a machine to produce an arc verse 1000 lines of code to produce and arc is still faster for processing no matter how many keep trying to tell me other wise not that your in that camp just some food for thought on this topic.

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16 minutes ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

Josh compare code from the Multiaxis toolpaths and from Axis sub and see the huge difference in the code. Then run each on a machine and see which one runs nicer and faster. Thank you for the suggestion and great to see it, but I have used Axis sub for years in some instances instead of the Moduleworks toolpaths because they have no filtering ability. When they get filtering finally added then they are starting to get with the program. I am still against a ton of code is better for arcs verses a smaller amount of code. 2 lines of code on a machine to produce an arc verse 1000 lines of code to produce and arc is still faster for processing no matter how many keep trying to tell me other wise not that your in that camp just some food for thought on this topic.

Ron are you sure about that? I have done quite a bit of axis substitution and never have seen or been able to filter an axis substitution toolpath, it will linearize axis substition in the same exact way a 5axis toolpath or module works path is filtered. Do you know of a trick to get it to filter or how do you setup a axis substituion path to get it filtered better than a multi-axis path. If you have an example part file you can send or details let me know because i dont think that would help any or i have not ever seen a filter for axis substitution that will work.

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1 minute ago, JoshC said:

Ron are you sure about that? I have done quite a bit of axis substitution and never have seen or been able to filter an axis substitution toolpath, it will linearize axis substition in the same exact way a 5axis toolpath or module works path is filtered. Do you know of a trick to get it to filter or how do you setup a axis substituion path to get it filtered better than a multi-axis path. If you have an example part file you can send or details let me know because i dont think that would help any or i have not ever seen a filter for axis substitution that will work.

Josh with 2020 I can't be sure of anything. V9 through X9 yes I could be, but now a days to be honest your guess is as good a mine.

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1 hour ago, JoshC said:

I cant remember x9 days lol, but i cant imagine X9 filtered axis substitution either. 

Well Axis sub on the above part had an NCI size of 33.8k which posted code using the MPFAN of 298 lines of code. The Multiaxis Roughing which is about the same motion of toolpath has 2744.2K of NCI and produced 19154 lines of code. Proof enough for me that Axis sub is far superior in this case and filters excess A moves that the Moduleworks toolpaths don't. I call this filtering you may call it something else, but either way comparing the code there is a huge difference.

Here is the link to the file so you can compare apple to apples.

OP3 and OP6 has the 2 operations I am comparing here.

NC Code differences

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36 minutes ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

Well Axis sub on the above part had an NCI size of 33.8k which posted code using the MPFAN of 298 lines of code. The Multiaxis Roughing which is about the same motion of toolpath has 2744.2K of NCI and produced 19154 lines of code. Proof enough for me that Axis sub is far superior in this case and filters excess A moves that the Moduleworks toolpaths don't. I call this filtering you may call it something else, but either way comparing the code there is a huge difference.

Here is the link to the file so you can compare apple to apples.

OP3 and OP6 has the 2 operations I am comparing here.

NC Code differences

Ill check this out when i get in tomorrow, only have the HLE on my home computer so i can open the file and view it but cant post so ill post that out tomorrow and check it out. Less code is not always better. Less code could mean you might see more facets, or on some machines the less code can leave less accurate results. Typically the machine will arrive at the destination (where the G-code says to go) properly, but what the machine does to get there is not always as predictable. Like instead of going from A0 to A90 i have heard many times that there are some machines that do better when breaking that movement up, so instead of going from A0 to A90 for example we could break that into 90 one degree movements or something similar. All i am getting at is less code does not always mean better but it certainly could be better for certain machines or controllers. I really think its a common misconception that shorter code is always better, in many cases shorter code is better (probably most cases actually) but in some cases adding additional points to the toolpath can help which is why mastercams multiaxis paths have an angular value in them and a distance setting, we can use the angular setting to output more vectors or code or the distance setting to output more code, the distance setting defaults off and is only there for situations when someone wants to add additional vectors every specific distance along the toolpath. Another thing to consider with axis substitution is it only works with a constant diameter, so it will work great for this test part, but your not going to get anywhere if this pocket was on a conical shaped part with axis substitution. Unless axis substitution does leave a better finish i wouldn't want to use it because of all of the limitations and the multi-axis paths are so exceptionally powerful for collision detection settings, linking, etc.

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3 minutes ago, JoshC said:

Ill check this out when i get in tomorrow, only have the HLE on my home computer so i can open the file and view it but cant post so ill post that out tomorrow and check it out. Less code is not always better. Less code could mean you might see more facets, or on some machines the less code can leave less accurate results. Typically the machine will arrive at the destination (where the G-code says to go) properly, but what the machine does to get there is not always as predictable. Like instead of going from A0 to A90 i have heard many times that there are some machines that do better when breaking that movement up, so instead of going from A0 to A90 for example we could break that into 90 one degree movements or something similar. All i am getting at is less code does not always mean better but it certainly could be better for certain machines or controllers. I really think its a common misconception that shorter code is always better, in many cases shorter code is better (probably most cases actually) but in some cases adding additional points to the toolpath can help which is why mastercams multiaxis paths have an angular value in them and a distance setting, we can use the angular setting to output more vectors or code or the distance setting to output more code, the distance setting defaults off and is only there for situations when someone wants to add additional vectors every specific distance along the toolpath. Another thing to consider with axis substitution is it only works with a constant diameter, so it will work great for this test part, but your not going to get anywhere if this pocket was on a conical shaped part with axis substitution. Unless axis substitution does leave a better finish i wouldn't want to use it because of all of the limitations and the multi-axis paths are so exceptionally powerful for collision detection settings, linking, etc.

Wow I was only talking about in this case not all the time and not for every type of possible part we can run into. Many ways to approach anything and in this case for this part in question Axis Sub is superior in my opinion and on just about any multi axis machine I have run I think it would run just fine for this part and this example.

The Old School 5 Axis toolpaths all have a filter in them and have no issues over the years using them when need be. The Moduleworks toolpaths do not give us the same options and it would be nice if they did. You have valid points and will leave the conversation with them noted.

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Just now, 5th Axis CGI said:

Wow I was only talking about in this case not all the time and not for every type of possible part we can run into. Many ways to approach anything and in this case for this part in question Axis Sub is superior in my opinion and on just about any multi axis machine I have run I think it would run just fine for this part and this example.

The Old School 5 Axis toolpaths all have a filter in them and have no issues over the years using them when need be. The Moduleworks toolpaths do not give us the same options and it would be nice if they did. You have valid points and will leave the conversation with them noted.

oh ok I gotcha, thanks you had great points too and it was good to see that size comparison from your toolpaths.

 

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