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FACING A SPHERE


4VRGJ03
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Good Evening All. I hope all of you are staying safe. I was hoping to get some ideas on this. 

Attached is a file. There is one operation. It is a facing operation. In a nut shell I’m milling a flat on a sphere. When the tool starts facing the sphere at the top there is not much surface to cut. As the tool progresses down, the cutting surface area progressively increases. So while the tool is cutting near the top you can see it is cutting air. How do I cut the sphere without cutting air? Basically I want the tool to follow the surface of the sphere. Or in other words I want to face down the sphere without cutting too much air. 

Mabey the facing toolpath is not best toolpath to use?? in it's simplest form,  I want to use a cutter with inserts and travel back and forth along the surface making cuts without cutting air.

Any ideas?

I appreciate everyone's time on this. 

SPHERE.emcam

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Leon82, In all honesty I really do appreciate every answer I get because I learn different strategies. This is exactly the same way tech support from In-House Solutions told me. In fact your answer is so identical it makes me believe you are the same person. In this case I don't agree with that solution because if I want to use Dynamic Milling I will use 2D Dynamic mill and create 2 sections (depths) and 2D dynamic mill both depths. 

But Leon82, here is what I am trying to accomplish......I want to use a cutter with inserts and travel back and forth along the surface making cuts without cutting air. I want the tool to follow the surface as I cut down the sphere essentially minimizing the air cutting. There has to be a way to do this.

Once again I thank everyone for thier time.

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I don't understand what's wrong with using Opti-rough and a stock model.  It works wonders with a "cutter with inserts"

A large step-over and a shallow depth will be basically the same as facing.

If you're trying to shave seconds off a operation you may have to use the toolpath editor or possibly had edit to get exactly what you want.  

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2 hours ago, M4573RMZD said:

I want the tool to follow the surface as I cut down the sphere essentially minimizing the air cutting.

It will not follow the surface with the path you want because by definition it is a 2 dimensional path. It cuts a single area at a specified depth(s) defined by a 2d boundary, regardless of how many times you call it. 

As Rstewart and Leon82 said you need to give the system your starting stock in 3 dimensions and your finished part in 3 dimensions in order for the system to calculate the toolpaths you want.

You might be able to use "Trim toolpath" but this has a tendency to be problematic as editing and regenerating can take more time. Because of this I avoid it unless backed into a corner, maybe I use it once every couple of years. I have never used it with facing or 2D Dynamic but you could give it a go.

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It is a 3D shape and you have been give the best process to handle a 3D part if you choose to ignore that advise then you have told everyone who has experience doing this to go pound sand as a friend of mine use to say. Sorry your experience and professional help sucks and I know better even though I am new to this trade. Is that how you really think your going to learn from others telling them to go pound sand?

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4 hours ago, 5th Axis CGI said:

It is a 3D shape and you have been give the best process to handle a 3D part if you choose to ignore that advise then you have told everyone who has experience doing this to go pound sand as a friend of mine use to say. Sorry your experience and professional help sucks and I know better even though I am new to this trade. Is that how you really think your going to learn from others telling them to go pound sand?

On the plus side, I have been learning a lot from reading what you guys post!

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Just now, 5th Axis CGI said:

You as well. I like to see someone adapting to their environment and pushing the limits of what can be done.

Thx Ron,

I still have a long way to go, but I am making progress.

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JParis That’s the method I was after. Thanks a lot! I had seen it done once before but couldn’t remember the details.

Sth Axis CGI…..I’m not telling any one with a substantial amount of experience to go and pound sand. Please don’t make it seem like that. In fact the method of OptiRough and Rest Material that Leon82 and the In-house solutions technician mentioned actually opened my eyes to another way to do this. I had originally thought of using 2D Dynamic mill at 2 depths (2 sections) which had a pretty attractive result in terms of machining time eliminating all air cutting.

The real issue 5th Axis CGI is that this a real life situation. I actually have to mill a Rod End on a 4-Axis which looks like a lollipop after it comes off the lathe.  But there is a few problems with Dynamic milling which forcing me to find a solution to travel back and forth the sphere with a High Feed Mill. Now this method will take some time as I can only cut .025” deep forcing me to find a way to eliminate as much air cutting as possible. Believe me I am not telling anyone to pound sand.

Problem 1. My Boss hates Dynamic Milling. He thinks it ruins machines. My boss has about 35 years experience and knows 3 tool paths. Contour, Surface Finish Parallel, and Flowline. I think he knows pocket too ;)

Problem 2. Even though we have nice new machines they have Fanuc Controls. Fanuc controls out of the box have limited memory. You have to pay, what my boss thinks, is a lot of money to buy bigger memory. SInce he never uses Dynamic Mill there has never been a need for him to shell out money to buy more memory. Therefore I may have no choice but to use a simpler toolpath like facing back an forth because the dynamic milling program may not fit in the machine.

To everyone who posted on this thread my hats off to all of you. You guys are the best and I love these discussions. 

All I’m trying to do is find a way to work with the tools that I have.

Stay Safe and have fun Gentlemen!

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28 minutes ago, M4573RMZD said:

Problem 1. My Boss hates Dynamic Milling. He thinks it ruins machines. My boss has about 35 years experience and knows 3 tool paths. Contour, Surface Finish Parallel, and Flowline. I think he knows pocket too ;)

Area Mill :

Show him the area mill operation it lets you define a controlled profile ramp entry ensuring a constant stepover on a lot shapes!

Edit : The profile ramp works in a stupid way, you have to specify a max length so just write like 100.0 inches profile ramp for it to use the full profile for entry.

Dynamic Mill :

Dynamic Mill doesn't have to ruin the machine if you increase the minimum arc size to .250 or .500 you can eliminate those sharp motions that damage the machine.

After that you could use area mill or pocket remachining to eliminate the remaining material.

Using Dynamic mill for deep pocket machining using long flute endmills (trochoidal milling) will save your boss big $$$$$ of machining time!!

Edited by Guest
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27 minutes ago, M4573RMZD said:

I actually have to mill a Rod End on a 4-Axis which looks like a lollipop after it comes off the lathe.  But there is a few problems with Dynamic milling which forcing me to find a solution to travel back and forth the sphere with a High Feed Mill. Now this method will take some time as I can only cut .025” deep forcing me to find a way to eliminate as much air cutting as possible.

Why not use an endmill?

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10 minutes ago, Leon82 said:

You can run from the pcmcia card on fanuc. Use the ones under 512 megabyte.

3 minutes ago, byte said:

Dynamic Mill doesn't have to ruin the machine if you increase the minimum arc size to .250 or .500 you can eliminate those sharp motions that damage the machine.

You see!!! I just learned 2 new valuable things! In a matter of 7 minutes!

You guys are the best!

Incredible!

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3 minutes ago, M4573RMZD said:

You see!!! I just learned 2 new valuable things! In a matter of 7 minutes!

You guys are the best!

Incredible!

I am out of likes for today but :thumbsup: , you seem open to knew Ideas so you will do well, let me know if you have more questions about the high speed machining operations.

You NEED to use high speed machining to stay competitive in this industry it saves HOURS!!! :thumbsup:

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1 minute ago, byte said:

Why not use an endmill?

This was going to be my next discussion on this issue. I will put something together this weekend about this. It's all about cost. The part that I am machining is 300M (4340M) Alloy steel in the normalized and tempered condition which is not hard its about 28-30 HRc. I have 200 pieces to cut. I could use and endmill but how long will the endmill last as compared to the inserts on a High Feed Mill......but then we start talking about the savings in machining time as a high feed mill will have a higher machining time as compared to an end mill. Endmills start to go up exponentially in price after 3/8".

Stay tuned because this thread is not over yet.

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