3+2 drilling

[Kendo]

I think I could benefit from a quick bullet-point list of the basic mastercam setup for this part, or someone to point me in the right direction if this has been covered:

Think of the part as a 1" plate, hex shaped, with holes drilled around the perimeter on the six faces of the hex

The parts lays down flat on a VMC, the table is a trunnion about X (A-axis) with a rotary about Z (C-axis)

I want the trunnion to only tilt away from me to 90, so the part is facing me and the rotary C indexes to the 6 faces to drill the holes

1st thing I do after importing my model is move the center of the hex to XY zero, then name a plane for each face and create a different drill operation for each face, with that plane selected as WCS and T-plane

 

I'm having problems with the A axis tilting however it wants, even after I edit the machine def and limit the axis to -0, +360

OR.... after playing with parameters... the table won't move at all, the part just jumps around in space

I've never used mastercam for anything more complicated than a single 2D pocket or contour, or some simple raster style 3D surfaces, never anything with more than one part orientation in a single setup... but I want to learn! 

Any help is appreciated,

Thanks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[crazy^millman]

33 minutes ago, Kendo said:

I think I could benefit from a quick bullet-point list of the basic mastercam setup for this part, or someone to point me in the right direction if this has been covered:

Think of the part as a 1" plate, hex shaped, with holes drilled around the perimeter on the six faces of the hex

The parts lays down flat on a VMC, the table is a trunnion about X (A-axis) with a rotary about Z (C-axis)

I want the trunnion to only tilt away from me to 90, so the part is facing me and the rotary C indexes to the 6 faces to drill the holes

1st thing I do after importing my model is move the center of the hex to XY zero, then name a plane for each face and create a different drill operation for each face, with that plane selected as WCS and T-plane

I'm having problems with the A axis tilting however it wants, even after I edit the machine def and limit the axis to -0, +360

OR.... after playing with parameters... the table won't move at all, the part just jumps around in space

I've never used mastercam for anything more complicated than a single 2D pocket or contour, or some simple raster style 3D surfaces, never anything with more than one part orientation in a single setup... but I want to learn! 

Any help is appreciated,

Thanks

That is a lot more complicated than a plate.

5th Axis 3+2 HASS Example

Here is a link to Mastercam 2020 file setup and ready to run through the Generic 5 Axis Machine sim, but beware it doesn't look correct in the Generic one. In other ones it runs differently like I would expect it to.

Remember what you see in Machine sim doesn't mean that is what you will see on the machine. You will have to check the mi or mr settings of your post to keep the trunnion positive facing. 

[Kendo]

Yeah, it's more complicated but the plate gets the idea across, that casting has holes and surfaces at a couple different C-axis positions and the top as well

Thanks so much for putting that together and sharing!.. looks like your example will give me a few new tricks to learn.

 

[jeff]

17 hours ago, Kendo said:

then name a plane for each face and create a different drill operation for each face, with that plane selected as WCS and T-plane

Your WCS needs to be TOP. 

Tplane and Cplane are your named planes/user created planes.

[Aaron Eberhard]

29 minutes ago, jeff said:

Your WCS needs to be TOP. 

Tplane and Cplane are your named planes/user created planes.

This^

Disclaimer:  I didn't look at your file...

The biggest thing to keep in mind in Multiaxis is how to answer the questions "Where to?" and "Where from?"    For example, if you tell a machine to rotate to A90° (where to?), what is that 90° relative from (where from?) (i.e., where did you have your A0° defined?). 

Mastercam handles this with the WCS (Where from?) and the Planes (where to?).  

So in your part, you don't have to physically move the model to 0,0,0, just like in 3 axis, you can move a WCS to where the part is going to be mounted in the fixture, and make planes relative to that if it saves you effort.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the default planes (front/left/right/back/etc.) may not match your machine's kinematics.  A90° or A-90° are equally proper ways to get to the "front" of your part, the C just has to rotate as well to match.   So sometimes, if you use the Mastercam Front plane, it'll cause your post to output A-90° C270° because that's closer than what you expected A90 C90 or whatever..   Look to see if you have Misc Integers that allows you to tell it what angle the toolpath is "starting from" so the post can guess the correct way to output it.  I think the generic posts use MI 6? (Colin will be along shortly to correct me...)

You may find that you just have to create your own plane by rotating the view the way you want the machine to rotate so the vectors line up, i.e., instead of using the Mastercam Front view, you have to create a new plane and only rotate the Y axis or something.

[crazy^millman]

1 hour ago, Kendo said:

Yeah, it's more complicated but the plate gets the idea across, that casting has holes and surfaces at a couple different C-axis positions and the top as well

Thanks so much for putting that together and sharing!.. looks like your example will give me a few new tricks to learn.

 

That was kind of the idea.