4th Axis Question

[Namliek_J@TheeCircle™]

I need to cut 6 slots on the outsdie of a cylinder. I want to draw all 6 slots around the outside of the clyinder, and then program it from there. I need to tell my program to use Rotary Axis Positioning to position the piece to the right place, but then use Axis Substution to rotate the piece as the slot is being cut to give the slot a helix. Can I do this, tell mastercam to index to a certain position and then use axis substution??

[Guest]

Is this something that rolldie might be better used for? I don't have a lot of experience with it but it sounds like it falls into this catagory.

 

chook rolldie

[Namliek_J@TheeCircle™]

i dont have a lot of experience with roll die, but ill look into it

[Qmp]

J.Keilman,

 

Can upload the sample to FTP site, I may help you out

 

Pat

[crazy^millman]

Well with axis sub you need to thin kabout what that implies. I would draw my line diametrical to repesent the cut. If you have an outside dia of 10" the the circumerence is going to 31.4159 in length. If you are looking for 6 equal space then that would be 5.236. Now if you are looking for it to cover s cetain distance then you need to lay out the lin accordinly on that. Big program you say well no just take a little math is all. You have 31.4159 as your legnth divide that by 360 and you have you angle to legnth distance for axis sub which is this example .5236 so if you want ot cover 10 degrees with a length of 10 inches you need to make your distance line accorindly. We are going to use center line for this exmaple. So you offset your line from center 5" in Y and to cover 10degs you offset your angle distance in this case .5236 x 5 which is 2.618. Now you pick the line use axis sub give it the dia of 10 and you have your one slot which you can transform. Now if you want to be real trick you do this for all the line and it will give you all the angle output wit hyour postion output very clean in Mastercam. Now rolldie is a great chook but I really like Axis sub for the output of code. I have use curve 5ax and Swarf 5ax and other 5 axis toolpath using only 4th axis as output but really hate the code I get very ulgy code in my book with axis sub I get very small code to accomplish the same task and much cleaner cuts.

 

HTH

 

I can make you an exmaple of this but may take a few days very busy.

[SaltyAcres]

Yes, I wouild agree with Ron (maybe not all that crazy). I use axis sub for all Rotary milling pockets, slots, cams, ramp in, and contouring

and it verifys clean. keeps it simple!

 

john

[John Summers]

If you're cutting slots that will accept a pin or roller, use the centerline of the slot rather than the slot walls for drive geometry. The walls will be more parallel to each other than if you use the wall geometry. You can use either ROLLDIE or CURVE5AX, but you need to create a cylinder if you use CURVE5AX and you must work with 3d geometry ('rolled' geometry). ROLLDIE can use either 3d or unrolled geometry.

[SaltyAcres]

yfytut

[Guest]

quote:

---

yfytut

---

huh?

 

[Mike Mattera - TFM]

I'm guessing this is an A axis. You may also need to do an UnRoll of the 3d geometry in the Rotary substitution parameter page.

 

I have a Rotary Training CD available at my web site if your interested.

 

Mike Mattera

[Reece L Gibson]

I also have a complete work book with many examples

[crazy^millman]

So a question John. Have you evey seen the Curve5ax give code similar to what you would get using axis sub. I did a 4th axis part not to long ago and tried Cruve5ax using a line to drive it on the surface and the code was just way to involved. I used axis sub and took what was going to be serval thousands lines of code down to 400 or so. I got my Y move to place I got my B move then I got my Y move where as anything else want to give multi Y moves and B moves to accomplish the same thing. In Axis sub you can use the center line and I found that I can get some very complex things done using axis sub but does require old school apporach to geometry creation but still find this function very powerful.( I DO HOWEVER WISH X SHOWED IT RIGHT IN BACKPLOT) I

[John Summers]

Axis substitution works fine if you're just driving the centerline, but once you offset (assume the cutter is smaller than the slot), the walls do not remain parallel. This is why ROLLDIE was developed. It does axis substitution with offset such that the walls remain parallel. ROLLDIE will also work on rolled geometry, but I am more comfortable working on unrolled geometry. CURVE5AX will also yield parallel walls, but you must create a cylinder, because CURVE5AX gets its tool axis vector from a surface. You also have to figure out the offset on EACH SIDE of the centerline, and drive the centerline in both directions (CURVE5AX has no SLOT option). The number of points is the -.NC file shouldn't matter, unless you have pretty antiquated machinery.

[crazy^millman]

Yeah number of points is no real problem expect for Fanuc keeping you to 2meg for machine Memory and more personal perference is all. You do have a good point about center line and the ability to keep the wall parrelle but I always try to fixture part to keep center line whenever possible and partical.

 

So back to the subject at hand did you get this figured out J. Keilman???