Blade Expert

[gcode]

I'm looking for opinions on blade expert

I've been building open vanes on our big Okumas for years, roughing with hyperMill, finishing with  Mastercam's

ModuleWorks 5X toolpaths. The flowlines of these vane walls are always straight so I'm able to finish them 

with endmills.

We're quoting actual blisks now., hogouts made from Ø20"  15-5 forgings. 

They look like quite a challenge,, and I'm thinking we might need to add a seat of Blade Expert to the warchest.

Thought and advice from the Blade Expert guys are welcome.

 

[crazy^millman]

You can get a demo of it and try it out.

I know a guy who use to work for CNC Software that can give you some help.

Cough Cough Aaron Eberhard Cough Cough.

[Aaron Eberhard]

Yep! I'd be happy to chat your ear off, Tom.  Shoot me an email @ [email protected], we can get on the horn and chat about it.

 

 

[Colin Gilchrist]

If it was my money, I'd buy Blade Expert any day, and twice on Sundays. I've used it for both impellers and blisks. What do you want to know?

[gcode]

My main concern is efficient roughing.

All the vanes's I've built to date have been made of A36 mild steel or 4140.

Take a button cutter @ 120ipm , add a hyperMill shape offset roughing toolpath and call it a day.

I make then in sizes from Ø36" x 2" tall to Ø6ft x 14" tall.

These new ones  are made of 15-5 and they are talking about Inconel as well. 

It looks like most of them are about Ø20" 

Some parts are actual blisks and others are two piece, open impellers with a second piece

brazed on top of the vanes to make an enclosed impeller.

We've already got a quote for Blade Expert and Port Expert, though from what I've seen so far,

Port Expert may not be required

 

 

[Aaron Eberhard]

The only reason you'd need port expert is it makes the closed impellers a lot easier.  If you're always going to be making them as a two piece, brazed assembly, then you probably won't ever use it.   There's all sorts of other places where it's REALLY useful, of course, but not in this arena.

The roughing works pretty well, and is, of course, stock aware.  As you know, Mastercam doesn't have a dedicated button cutter type, so you'll need to do define it as a bull nose. 

One downside for Inconel and such is that it doesn't support the feedmill profile, although it does look like it supports LENS type circle segment, so you can probably approximate it pretty close.