Workflow/Management of Very Large Multi-axis Parts

[alexlikesyou]

For most of my programming career a "big" part for me was like a 16 inch block.  Now at my new job that would be considered tiny.  A good portion of what I'm working on now are fairly complex feed screws that are 15 to 24+ inches in diameter and 300+ inches long.  The biggest hurdle I'm running into is literally how long it takes to process some toolpaths.  If I need to adjust a lead in or something it'll take like 2+ hours to regen a single path if it is looking at stock model.  You multiply this by the 20+ paths I need to regenerate on some parts and I do like 5 minutes of work to like an entire day of generating toolpaths.  Also, mastercam's little quirks and bugs that used to happen rarely seem to happen constantly on large parts.

This is basically the workflow I've been trying and I'm just wondering if there's some better ideas on how to handle this sort of thing--

-Get the Mastercam and Vericut projects set up
-Chop up the model into smaller sections
-Block out (I don't know if there's a better term for this) the toolpaths by turning my tolerances up and not using any stock models so toolpath regen times are reasonable
-Don't even bother wasting my time to verify most operations in mastercam and just use vericut because the tool constantly just flies through the part when the tool plane changes.  Tried fixing this by adding multi-axis link to a bunch of things but it still sends the tool "home" when using verify but doesn't do it for backplot nor does it post this way. If mastercam's verify does decide to work fine it will start giving me unexpected errors.
-Save out STL's  to cut down on having to constantly regenerate a stock model if what I'm changing doesn't really change where there's going to be stock.
-Regularly run repair file as Unified Multi-Axis will start throwing errors anytime I try to use it or open a path's parameters if I'm working on a part for a while and this seems to fix it for a while.
-By this time if I'm mostly happy with what I'm seeing I start using stock models to trim down the paths.   Sometimes I can create simplified geometry for a stock model and this reduces calculation time but sometimes its just not all that easy as most things are wrapped around a helix.  Toolpath regen times start to really jump.
-Try to avoid rotary advance when I can but ultimately end up using it most of the time for roughing because my use case is pretty much exactly what it's for (offset continuous milling).  Lament the 1 to 3+ hour regen times per path.  Feel joy when it only takes 35 minutes.

I'm seriously considering requesting a second workstation and using it to batch process so I could at least do some work while it's processing rather than stare at the multi-thread manager all day.

[crazy^millman]

2 minutes ago, alexlikesyou said:

For most of my programming career a "big" part for me was like a 16 inch block.  Now at my new job that would be considered tiny.  A good portion of what I'm working on now are fairly complex feed screws that are 15 to 24+ inches in diameter and 300+ inches long.  The biggest hurdle I'm running into is literally how long it takes to process some toolpaths.  If I need to adjust a lead in or something it'll take like 2+ hours to regen a single path if it is looking at stock model.  You multiply this by the 20+ paths I need to regenerate on some parts and I do like 5 minutes of work to like an entire day of generating toolpaths.  Also, mastercam's little quirks and bugs that used to happen rarely seem to happen constantly on large parts.

This is basically the workflow I've been trying and I'm just wondering if there's some better ideas on how to handle this sort of thing--

-Get the Mastercam and Vericut projects set up
-Chop up the model into smaller sections
-Block out (I don't know if there's a better term for this) the toolpaths by turning my tolerances up and not using any stock models so toolpath regen times are reasonable
-Don't even bother wasting my time to verify most operations in mastercam and just use vericut because the tool constantly just flies through the part when the tool plane changes.  Tried fixing this by adding multi-axis link to a bunch of things but it still sends the tool "home" when using verify but doesn't do it for backplot nor does it post this way. If mastercam's verify does decide to work fine it will start giving me unexpected errors.
-Save out STL's  to cut down on having to constantly regenerate a stock model if what I'm changing doesn't really change where there's going to be stock.
-Regularly run repair file as Unified Multi-Axis will start throwing errors anytime I try to use it or open a path's parameters if I'm working on a part for a while and this seems to fix it for a while.
-By this time if I'm mostly happy with what I'm seeing I start using stock models to trim down the paths.   Sometimes I can create simplified geometry for a stock model and this reduces calculation time but sometimes its just not all that easy as most things are wrapped around a helix.  Toolpath regen times start to really jump.
-Try to avoid rotary advance when I can but ultimately end up using it most of the time for roughing because my use case is pretty much exactly what it's for (offset continuous milling).  Lament the 1 to 3+ hour regen times per path.  Feel joy when it only takes 35 minutes.

I'm seriously considering requesting a second workstation and using it to batch process so I could at least do some work while it's processing rather than stare at the multi-thread manager all day.

Yes welcome to the wonderful world of watching paint dry when programming big parts.

I also wouldn't even try to use Mastercam Verify and just use the Vericut for what you are doing.

Yes a 2nd work station or even 3rd work station would be good so you can have multiple parts being programmed at the same time why you are watching paint dry. You can use a Star-Tec KM Splitter to share the 3 Workstations from one mouse, Key Board and Monitors.

https://www.startech.com/en-us/server-management/sv431dhd4ku

Look to Axis Sub for some of the toolpaths verses the Multiaxis toolpaths. 1/10-1/100 processing time and yes even on variable pitch screws you can make them work.

Think about working with Solid Models of stock for what you are doing verses Stock Models. If you are roughing to +.25 then make a solid of the screw like that and then use that for a starting stock verses a processed stock models. This is where I will use my resources and et an engineer to model up process models to use for the manufacturing process. They can model up the original one they can model up operational models to speed up your programming efforts. IF not in your hours of crunching time you can work on making up your own. Model Prep might not give you what you need, so don't for get about surfaces and turning them sheet solid that can be thicken for the amount of stock for each place in the machining that you are leaving the stock at. The other advantage will be they can also be used for Vericut and will speed up the work over there as well.

[alexlikesyou]

7 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

Look to Axis Sub for some of the toolpaths verses the Multiaxis toolpaths. 1/10-1/100 processing time and yes even on variable pitch screws you can make them work.

I recently got them to invest in Vericut (still getting used to using it) so I might revisit using axis sub where I can.  Before I just kind felt like I was flying blind because I didn't have a way to verify it after offsetting it.  Something I really don't want to do on a piece of stock worth a quarter million dollars.  Now I can probably get away with confidently using it more now that you mention it.

15 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

Think about working with Solid Models of stock for what you are doing verses Stock Models. If you are roughing to +.25 then make a solid of the screw like that and then use that for a starting stock verses a processed stock models. This is where I will use my resources and et an engineer to model up process models to use for the manufacturing process. They can model up the original one they can model up operational models to speed up your programming efforts. IF not in your hours of crunching time you can work on making up your own. Model Prep might not give you what you need, so don't for get about surfaces and turning them sheet solid that can be thicken for the amount of stock for each place in the machining that you are leaving the stock at. The other advantage will be they can also be used for Vericut and will speed up the work over there as well.

Definitely agree/noticed solid models when used as a stock model generate significantly faster than an STL.  The engineers we have here are not that great at modeling so these more complex things usually fall into my lap.  Lots of "it looks good on a print but the topology is totally unusable to drive toolpaths" sort of problems.  Circling back to my "i guess I need another workstation" issue.  I'm just kind of hitting the acceptance stage that there's no way around this.  Yesterday my laptop went about nuclear when trying to adjust a model in solidworks to get the sizing I needed while regenerating a toolpath and fried a couple components so I'm trying to get away from trying to multi-task on a single workstation now. 

[Zoffen]

You are doing this on a laptop?

There is your first problem. Look in the benchmark thread at the latest builds and copy those. Max out the ram. Overclock the ram and CPU. I bet it will cut down calc times in half IMHO....

Then do tool path calculation comparison on your laptop vs the new workstation and show the management the time difference.

I bet good money that you will have approval for unlimited workstations at that  point! Make sure to get a bigger desk as well.

 

 

Good luck!

[Aaron Eberhard]

13 minutes ago, Zoffen said:

You are doing this on a laptop?

There is your first problem. Look in the benchmark thread at the latest builds and copy those. Max out the ram. Overclock the ram and CPU. I bet it will cut down calc times in half IMHO....

Then do tool path calculation comparison on your laptop vs the new workstation and show the management the time difference.

I bet good money that you will have approval for unlimited workstations at that  point! Make sure to get a bigger desk as well.

Good luck!

Hard agree on this one..  I was just talking to Ron about this the other day because I really suffered from it when we were doing a screen share when I had a few large programs open as well as some regeneration.

The biggest problem with laptops is thermal management.   When things get too hot, it'll start pulling clock speed from the CPU & GPU to reduce the heat being generated.  I use a program called "HWMonitor" to keep tabs on what I'm seeing.  On an out-of-the-box  i7 or i9 processor, you go into thermal overload mode when you're exceeding 100°C for ~5-10s or so. 

Unfortunately I do travel for work sometimes, so a laptop fits my bill the best.  What I did after seeing what was going on was to put my laptop on a cooling pad and at Ron's suggestion I got a KLIM "air vacuum" from Amazon.   Since then, my clock speed hasn't been pulled when it was really crunching.

Here's what you want to pay attention to:

EDIT: Apparently we can't embed pictures anymore.. see attachment.

A couple of notes:

* If you're idle, it'll start pulling down clock speeds because it's not needed.

* Don't be surprised to see the temperature spike to 100° immediately, then start to cool down a bit.  Heat has "thermal mass" and it takes a bit to propagate from the processor core > casing > heatsink > air.  It's only a problem if the fans & heat pipes can't get it under control after a bit.

----------------------------------

Otherwise, remember to use realistic stock tolerances and such, no need to create a stock model @ .001" accuracy if you're leaving .2" on the walls.  Loosen that way up, both on the initial page and the operation selection where you can define your tool/cut tolerance.  

Same goes for toolpaths and collision control tolerances.  If you're doing tilt-away collision control with .1" avoidance on your holder, then doing a .010-.020" tolerance on your part is fine.  Unless there's a specific reason, I generally recommend avoidance tolerances @ 25% of the avoidance amount. 

If you can, break your collision control into logical chunks (they're processed sequentially), so, for example, if you need two of them (say, tilt away to avoid the holder and retract along tool axis to avoid gouging the tip), do the first one without processing the flutes, uncheck "machining geometry" and only choose "Avoidance geometry".  You can reselect all the surfaces (even if they were your cut surfaces) but now they'll be a lot more course @ .020" tol instead of your original model @ .001" (or whatever).   After that, then just have the flutes only on the retract along tool axis.

[alexlikesyou]

3 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

Hard agree on this one..  I was just talking to Ron about this the other day because I really suffered from it when we were doing a screen share when I had a few large programs open as well as some regeneration.

The biggest problem with laptops is thermal management.   When things get too hot, it'll start pulling clock speed from the CPU & GPU to reduce the heat being generated.  I use a program called "HWMonitor" to keep tabs on what I'm seeing.  On an out-of-the-box  i7 or i9 processor, you go into thermal overload mode when you're exceeding 100°C for ~5-10s or so. 

Unfortunately I do travel for work sometimes, so a laptop fits my bill the best.  What I did after seeing what was going on was to put my laptop on a cooling pad and at Ron's suggestion I got a KLIM "air vacuum" from Amazon.   Since then, my clock speed hasn't been pulled when it was really crunching.

Here's what you want to pay attention to:

EDIT: Apparently we can't embed pictures anymore.. see attachment.

A couple of notes:

* If you're idle, it'll start pulling down clock speeds because it's not needed.

* Don't be surprised to see the temperature spike to 100° immediately, then start to cool down a bit.  Heat has "thermal mass" and it takes a bit to propagate from the processor core > casing > heatsink > air.  It's only a problem if the fans & heat pipes can't get it under control after a bit.

----------------------------------

Otherwise, remember to use realistic stock tolerances and such, no need to create a stock model @ .001" accuracy if you're leaving .2" on the walls.  Loose that way up.  Same goes for toolpaths and collision control tolerances.  If you're doing tilt-away collision control with .1" avoidance on your holder, then doing a .010-.020" tolerance on your part is fine.  Unless there's a specific reason, I generally recommend avoidance tolerances @ 25% of the avoidance amount. 

If you can, break your collision control into logical chunks (they're processed sequentially), so, for example, if you need two of them (say, tilt away to avoid the holder and retract along tool axis to avoid gouging the tip), do the first one without processing the flutes, uncheck "machining geometry" and only choose "Avoidance geometry".  You can reselect all the surfaces (even if they were your cut surfaces) but now they'll be a lot more course @ .020" tol instead of your original model @ .001" (or whatever).   After that, then just have the flutes only on the retract along tool axis.

Thermal throttling is definitely the biggest issue with the laptop.  The convenience of being able to undock it and wander over to the engineering building or to some place on the floor (the shop here is massive.  like a 5+ minute walk to some machines from my office) which makes having a laptop nice.  The Xeon in it overclocks to 4.8 ghz but it can't hold that for a long time under full load.  It turns into the surface of the sun.  My rig at home, which I have watercooled, processes things much faster even at a slightly lower clock speed just because it can maintain it.

[Aaron Eberhard]

2 minutes ago, alexlikesyou said:

Thermal throttling is definitely the biggest issue with the laptop.  The convenience of being able to undock it and wander over to the engineering building or to some place on the floor (the shop here is massive.  like a 5+ minute walk to some machines from my office) which makes having a laptop nice.  The Xeon in it overclocks to 4.8 ghz but it can't hold that for a long time under full load.  It turns into the surface of the sun.  My rig at home, which I have watercooled, processes things much faster even at a slightly lower clock speed just because it can maintain it.

Yeah, understood.. .  Perhaps a desktop with a good remote control program would work better?  Get a Microsoft Surface to carry around for remote desktop?

These are the two products I grabbed:

KLIM Cooling Pad - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MRWE5AX

KLIM Air Vacuum - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G3G3C7M

[alexlikesyou]

7 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

Yeah, understood.. .  Perhaps a desktop with a good remote control program would work better?  Get a Microsoft Surface to carry around for remote desktop?

These are the two products I grabbed:

KLIM Cooling Pad - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MRWE5AX

KLIM Air Vacuum - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G3G3C7M

Definitely going to pick up one of these air vacuums.

Luckily they are very supportive of my work here so if I need something they'll usually have no issue spending the money.  Total opposite of my previous shop!  I'm still mentally in that penny pinching place.  I'm probably going to put in a request for a desktop.  Everyone else around here uses surfaces.  So there's probably a few lying around. I think I might try the remote desktop route for when I'm on site.

[Aaron Eberhard]

6 minutes ago, alexlikesyou said:

Definitely going to pick up one of these air vacuums.

Luckily they are very supportive of my work here so if I need something they'll usually have no issue spending the money.  Total opposite of my previous shop!  I'm still mentally in that penny pinching place.  I'm probably going to put in a request for a desktop.  Everyone else around here uses surfaces.  So there's probably a few lying around. I think I might try the remote desktop route for when I'm on site.

Sounds like you're in the right environment for success, and that's great to hear :)

Another thing that you may already know to do that I forgot to mention is to use the simplest tool geometry to do the job.  For example, if you're using a high feed mill for roughing, define it as a bull nose.  That can take 40-50% off the stock model & toolpath processing time.  It will leave you with a model that has less material in the corners than "real life" so you do have to be careful, but it can really save on some big parts.

[Zoffen]

3 hours ago, alexlikesyou said:

Thermal throttling is definitely the biggest issue with the laptop.  The convenience of being able to undock it and wander over to the engineering building or to some place on the floor (the shop here is massive.  like a 5+ minute walk to some machines from my office) which makes having a laptop nice.  The Xeon in it overclocks to 4.8 ghz but it can't hold that for a long time under full load.  It turns into the surface of the sun.  My rig at home, which I have watercooled, processes things much faster even at a slightly lower clock speed just because it can maintain it.

Super Powerful Desktop in the office then use remote desktop on a lower end laptop. Best of both worlds.

[Corey Hampshire]

12 hours ago, Zoffen said:

Super Powerful Desktop in the office then use remote desktop on a lower end laptop. Best of both worlds.

Excuse my ignorance here, I didn't think you could run Mastercam remotely? 

[#Rekd™]

28 minutes ago, Corey Hampshire said:

I didn't think you could run Mastercam remotely? 

I have a USB Hasp and it works if the program is already open. I can't open MC through Remote Desktop if it isn't already open. 

That said I use my laptop with Mastercam installed on it. 

[Corey Hampshire]

I have the USB Hasp also.  I will try leaving Mastercam open tonight and try that. Thanks!

[alexlikesyou]

So after the suggestions here I ended up changing my approach on this part I'm working on now.  While a bit time consuming, I made a solids to use instead of generating stock models for the in process roughing.  I broke up my initial roughing passes a little more and opened up tolerances by quite a bit until I was starting to get collisions then backed it off.  Massive improvement.  Those particular toolpaths regen times got cut in half.

I still put in a request for a desktop, so they're going to have me get together with IT so I can get away from working from my laptop all the time.

I've been lurking these forums since like 2015 and i pick up something just about everyday that makes me a better programmer.  I really appreciate all the help and advice you guys give.

[JB7280]

On 5/12/2022 at 2:47 PM, Aaron Eberhard said:

Yeah, understood.. .  Perhaps a desktop with a good remote control program would work better?  Get a Microsoft Surface to carry around for remote desktop?

These are the two products I grabbed:

KLIM Cooling Pad - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MRWE5AX

KLIM Air Vacuum - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G3G3C7M

When I'm at my desk, my laptop is upright, in one of these (Amazon.com: Upgraded Laptop Vertical Stand, OMOTON 3-in-1 MacBook Laptop Holder Dock with Sturdy Silicone Pads for Ultra Protection, Suitable for iPhone/iPad/MackBook Pro/Surface/Samsung/Android Tablets, Black : Electronics)

 

Do you think being upright helps to keep it cooler?  Do you know of anything like that air vacuum that would work for this positioning?

[crazy^millman]

9 hours ago, JB7280 said:

When I'm at my desk, my laptop is upright, in one of these (Amazon.com: Upgraded Laptop Vertical Stand, OMOTON 3-in-1 MacBook Laptop Holder Dock with Sturdy Silicone Pads for Ultra Protection, Suitable for iPhone/iPad/MackBook Pro/Surface/Samsung/Android Tablets, Black : Electronics)

 

Do you think being upright helps to keep it cooler?  Do you know of anything like that air vacuum that would work for this positioning?

I have two air vacuum on my Laptop and the cooling pad. They have a little pad that extends out that the laptop sits on top of that helps hold it in place. The vent ports are to the back so depending how yours is made the trick will be securing them to the vent posts. The come with several different silicon boots to cover it up to draw the air through it.

[alexlikesyou]

Tangentially related to this topic--

My actual educational background is 3D Animation and Visual Effects.  Weird string of events and I end up in this trade.  Story for another day.  One of the advantages of that sort of work is you can easily push all your processing and rendering to a farm.  Obviously this is a bit more useful for programs like Max and Maya since a complex render can take anywhere from hours to literal days.  Having 500 computers each rendering a single frame each is really the only way you can get some stuff done before the heat death of the universe.  

Can you accomplish something like with mastercam on an obviously smaller scale?  It would be great to just have a couple of rack mount stations you could just push stuff to that would each process a tool path with.  Seems like you could maybe accomplish something like this with Batch but a lot less intuitively/conveniently.  The need for something like this is probably pretty low since not many people are constantly regenerating like 100 operations at once.  So I can see why you wouldn't spend the resources developing it. There's a lot of parts I do that are close enough to others that I do a lot of importing operations and rechaining/reselecting and I'm pretty much done.  

I guess I am just aware of how much of my life I've spent watching a render/processing bar. lol