I Am Finally Making 5 Axis Toolpaths!

[Metallic]

On 3/11/2021 at 9:58 PM, CNC_Newbie said:

I just wanted to publicly celebrate a milestone for me.  I can now generate some basic 5 axis tool paths in Mastercam.  Colon G. Is the man, he is the man responsible for helping me understand what I was doing wrong. I have so much to learn, but it feels amazing to actually set up a model with drive lines, set the axis I want the Spindle to follow and it actually work.

 

I still need to gain better control of the spindle position. When using the Curve 5 axis. I need to learn how to switch from Axis control via Line to Around a point and blend the 2 operations into a single cut.

I’ll be making some videos with screen cap soon to show exactly what I want am trying to accomplish soon. Trying to describe what I would like to learn with a very limited mastercam vocabulary is very challenging.

 

for example let’s say I want to side mill a line that has a straight section and a curve. If I use lines for axis control for the straight section it works great, however if I use the lines around the curve section and try to make a tool path in one go straight and curve, the spindle end of the cutter does strange things, It’s hard to tell which of the axis control lines to adjust to correct the spindle position.   I bet your lost with me trying to explain it, but if I show you exactly what I am seeing, instantly you will know what I am trying to convey 

 

Learning mastercam has not been easy, in fact it’s darn right hard.  

 

 

Congrats! Man when I started with multiaxis my head was swimming in terminology that I didn't understand or comprehend. It took me several months to fully comprehend what tool vectors were and how they functioned regarding 5 axis machining. Since our post outputs vectors and not angles, I had no clue what it was gonna look like! We needed Vericut because of that and it helps a ton. Speaking of posts, Im STILL understanding what type of output I want, so I still get post mods from the guys at Postability. I haven't touched out 3 axis post in years.

I was getting constant out of limit errors at the control becasue I didn't understand approach moves on the 5 axis. I still don't fully get it but I have figured out some good solutions to approach the cut zone without erroring out 99% of the time. Same kinda deal with linking moves between slices or layers. My machine would error out if I had swarf layers because it would hit singularities when it transitioned between layers. Well this is controlled by one of my Misc Integers which I figured out, so that it does a retract move between cuts. There is an INCREDIBLE amount of control with the ModuleWorks toolpaths that it still boggles my mind.

 

Ive been programming 5-axis machines for almost 4 years and my mind is still blown. I feel like I have only scratched the surface of what there is. I tried some triangular mesh geodesic toolpaths this winter on a part we were running and I got hella into the weeds reading about geodesic and also advanced geometry mathematics. IDK if you know, but geodesic can take you down some crazy rabbitholes of general relativity. Pretty heady.

 

I would highly recommend some technical reading of the ModuleWorks help file. It is jam packed with relevant terminology and information that gets very nitty gritty with multiaxis toolpaths, calculations, errors, etc. It is basically required reading IMO.

The journey continues....today Im having a stupid issue with a very simple 5 axis swarf op that I just cannot for the life of me figure out.

[CNC_Newbie]

6 hours ago, Metallic said:

Congrats! Man when I started with multiaxis my head was swimming in terminology that I didn't understand or comprehend. It took me several months to fully comprehend what tool vectors were and how they functioned regarding 5 axis machining. Since our post outputs vectors and not angles, I had no clue what it was gonna look like! We needed Vericut because of that and it helps a ton. Speaking of posts, Im STILL understanding what type of output I want, so I still get post mods from the guys at Postability. I haven't touched out 3 axis post in years.

I was getting constant out of limit errors at the control becasue I didn't understand approach moves on the 5 axis. I still don't fully get it but I have figured out some good solutions to approach the cut zone without erroring out 99% of the time. Same kinda deal with linking moves between slices or layers. My machine would error out if I had swarf layers because it would hit singularities when it transitioned between layers. Well this is controlled by one of my Misc Integers which I figured out, so that it does a retract move between cuts. There is an INCREDIBLE amount of control with the ModuleWorks toolpaths that it still boggles my mind.

 

Ive been programming 5-axis machines for almost 4 years and my mind is still blown. I feel like I have only scratched the surface of what there is. I tried some triangular mesh geodesic toolpaths this winter on a part we were running and I got hella into the weeds reading about geodesic and also advanced geometry mathematics. IDK if you know, but geodesic can take you down some crazy rabbitholes of general relativity. Pretty heady.

 

I would highly recommend some technical reading of the ModuleWorks help file. It is jam packed with relevant terminology and information that gets very nitty gritty with multiaxis toolpaths, calculations, errors, etc. It is basically required reading IMO.

The journey continues....today Im having a stupid issue with a very simple 5 axis swarf op that I just cannot for the life of me figure out.

Thanks for the tips and reading material. Lots to learn and today it’s figuring out why the model has all of these crazy lines inside of the part in the GUI 

[Metals and materials]

On 3/16/2021 at 7:31 AM, The Chipmaker said:

 I just started programming in 5 axis. Big learning curve. It is crazy the math and science that goes into these machines! We bought a DMG Mori DMU 160 FD Duo block. It has turning and milling capabilities. Nice machine.

We have the same machine. Just bought it. Still exploring the capabilities. Not running at full potential.