helical milling in cimco

[dennis_t]

Is there a way to helical mill a tapered pocket using cimco?? Thanks!

[?Mark]

I see that you started this topic in instructor forum also.

You'll need to clarify this question a bit to get responses.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what you mean...

Mark

[dennis_t]

I'm trying to mill a hole 2" deep and it's drafted all the way down. If I use contour to do this, it ramps down the stepdown amount and then does a flat bottom pass at that Z level. Is there a way to mill a continuous ramp (helical) from top to bottom? Hope that's more clear. Thanks.

 

Dennis

[Guest]

Not really, at least for me.

 

What is generating your code, Cimco?

 

Or are you using mastercam and reading your code in Cimco. That's where I am confused.

[?Mark]

If I understand it right you can drill/mill hole at the smallest dia of your drafted hole and then create surface and use flowline toolpath to do a nice helical motion to finish the draft...

It's one of the ways to do it...

hth

[dennis_t]

Cimco works with Mastercam. I use Cimco to generate tool paths for high speed milling in hardened steel. All the surfaces and boundaries are in Mastercam like usual. For electrodes, we just use Mastercam. But for steel, we use Cimco. We get to it through a C-hook. It still shows toolpaths in Mastercam when you backplot or verify it, just like a step generated in Mastercam would. It is also posted through Mastercam. It just seems to be better for our tooling with more built in lead-ins and ramps, when cutting steel. I just can't figure out how to helical mill with it. It works fine contouring it, but I'm just looking for a little faster way.

[dennis_t]

Thanks Mark. I have used Flowline through Mastercam, and it does work. I was just curious if anyone else uses Cimco and can find a helical option in there.