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Learning How To Program an Impeller?


#Rekd™
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Hi,

Since I at home during the Covid-19 situation I am trying to use this time to further my Mastercam skills. 

I am trying to teach myself how to program an impeller without using Blade Expert. I am an Educational User but I am sure I will need the help of the Industrial users!!!

Could anyone let me know if I am heading in the right direction? 

Thanks for any advice or critique!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vnu5ahwmoscfnts/Impellar_JF.emcam?dl=0

 

Capture.JPG

Capture1.JPG

 

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Don't ever change the 1st settings in the advanced 5 axis toolpaths on the linking page. Leave that as it is and make the #2 and #3 control other things. Changing that really gives these toolpaths a fit in Mastercam. The Mesh Engine needs them and by changing it the toolpath becomes very unstable.

Make Tilt lines at the stat and end of the morph. Process is to make a lines using endpoints on the upper and lower edges that are towards the floor of the impeller. Now on tool axis control use those lines to drive the toolpath Yes 4 lines is all that is needed. Make sure the settings are like so on the tool axis control.

image.png

I also changed all the geometry to drive it from the solid. If you want to go on and off the part use the extend function. I try to leave my morph chains as close to original as possible. By making them extended like you did makes things messy for the toolpath.

image.png.d88147ab7af15ff00a403282d02637fa.png

Not sure if you have 2020 Educational, but here is a link to the file saved in 2020 like I have it show above.

2020 Link

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One other thought to finish the wall is look to a taper ball endmill verses the ball endmill. We get some added benefits in doing so. We will have a stronger tool since we have a bigger Diameter tool to work from and you will find the angle sweep is normally smaller for impellers using a tapered ball endmill verses a straight ball endmill. Trick most times is finding one with the correct Radius. I would have these custom made if I were doing production on impellers. 7-15 degree included angle it where I like to start.

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2 hours ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

One other thought to finish the wall is look to a taper ball endmill verses the ball endmill.

I assume still using the Swarf toolpath?

Is there a way to leave some wall stock on the 2 side Morph paths to let the Swarf finish it fully?

This is not an actual part or project, hypothetical for learning only.....I am having fun trying to learn how and to see by making one small change to a multi-axis toolpath can make a world of difference!!

Something good usually comes out of something bad....Covid-19 is bad, learning new skills and upgrading current skills is something good!!!

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13 hours ago, #Rekd™ said:

I assume still using the Swarf toolpath?

Is there a way to leave some wall stock on the 2 side Morph paths to let the Swarf finish it fully?

Yes Exactly.

Yes just tels it how much you want to leave on the walls. You will notice I have 2 Deg tilt on the collision using the walls for avoidance so the floor Morph is not touching the wall just close to the root not the root fillet when you do the swarf that is what will clean up the wall and the fillet.

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21 hours ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

Not sure if you have 2020 Educational, but here is a link to the file saved in 2020 like I have it show above.

Ron, any chance of getting you to upload a regular 2020 MC file of this, for those of us who don't have the educational version on our work PCs?

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1 hour ago, Solidworkscadman said:

thats some clean looking toolpaths ron

Just took what was there and tweaked it was all.

1 hour ago, So not a Guru said:

Ron, any chance of getting you to upload a regular 2020 MC file of this, for those of us who don't have the educational version on our work PCs?

Yes Zeke, I will convert it to a regular Mastercam file. It will take me little bit of time to do so.

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Okay took a little bit of work and I didn't use the new Swarf I reverted back to the old school swarf. I also used the Verisurf Tool to convert the Swarf splines into new splines that are constant nodes of 200 nodes. I used Nodes as the Sync process in the chains for the Swarf toolpaths. I also added Transform Operations to help those that struggle with them and how to machine a part effectively using them. File is about 60mb.

5th Axis Impeller in Mastercam 2020

Hopefully this will be a help to others and it is Mastercam 2020. No I will not convert it backwards to a previous version. If I can stay current then your company should be able to also.

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1 hour ago, #Rekd™ said:

Wow! That looks a million times better then my file!!!

 

John thanks and in all reality the walls of this impeller would be better machined using a ball endmill and surface machining down the wall. A different way to approach it is do the fin all the way around with one motion verse one wall then the opposite wall. I setup the machine sim using one of the generic machines for those who want to watch the motion, should take the settings and hit the run button in machine sim and go with no issues. 

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10 hours ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

Hopefully this will be a help to others

Awesome Ron! I can't begin to thank you enough for this. I can guaranty I'll be using what I learn from this often. We don't make impellers, but the paths and settings here I can use in many other applications.

Kudos to you sir.

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3 minutes ago, #Rekd™ said:

Ron do the Tool and Construction planes matter with 5 axis programming? 

I'm interest in this as well. I was taught that all of my tool planes had to have the same origin as my WCS plane, but watching this yesterday got me wondering if the tool & construction plane's origin positions matter at all.

 

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8 minutes ago, #Rekd™ said:

Thanks for linking that video! That is showing a 3+2 using standard 2D paths so the Tool and Construction planes should matter to get the toolpath parallel to the solid face they are machining.

 

Yes, the rotations. But the origin points are not synced to the WCS.

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On 4/9/2020 at 5:51 AM, #Rekd™ said:

Ron do the Tool and Construction planes matter with 5 axis programming? 

No and yes. No because they have pretty much fixed everything I was seeing in previous version related to having to move your model to Zero. Yes because if your not programming full 5 Axis then you will want to use the Tplane in some of the toolpaths to help set the correct angle. The other issues is the Internal backplot will mess with your brain since it will not normally start where you expect it. You have to ignore the 1st move and just know that move is a false and the move after it when Mastercam gets it acts together is what matters. Yes T-plane and Cplane should still always match each other. No my almost 2 decades of using Mastercam I have never used a different Tplane and Cplane that I can remember. I have asked many times over the years to give the programmer the option to just force T and C planes to always be equal and not make me change them when I am changing the planes in operations. I have that set in my config and done. I want to use edit common parameters to change planes or what to change them in an operation it drives me crazy having to go click the T and C planes need to be equal.

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On 4/9/2020 at 7:57 AM, So not a Guru said:

but watching this yesterday got me wondering if the tool & construction plane's origin positions matter at all

Not sure why this didn't come up yet, it depends on the post!  IIRC, the generic post has logic to shift the origin to the T/C planes for when they don't match the origin of the WCS.  This can become useful when using G68.2 or other local coordinate system methods.  I have only played with it, and have never really ever "used" this functionality, but it could be very useful when creating programs that have "local features", and possibly for situations where one might want to build subs.

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  • 3 months later...
On 4/13/2020 at 11:32 AM, crazy^millman said:

Bump.

Good topic for anyone learning Mastercam so hopefully others can benefit from the work of John and myself from this topic.

This is a bit of a bump too.

But a question for you at the same time.

The Roughing routine used to rough between the fins, what happened to it in 2021? 

 

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