Mirror 5-axis

[DavidB]

If I make a part on a 5-axis machine, then the customer say's make me a Left hand part also. How much work is that?

 

Can a 5-axis program be mirrored?

Will the Transform mirror give good results?

 

Or what do you guys do when making Left and Right handed parts?

 

 

Thanks

[Greg Williams]

David,

 

Mirror should work but you will need left hand cutters

[DavidB]

Thats not an option Greg 90 tools in this program

[Bruce Caulley]

Mirror should work if you select the reverse toolpath tab and mirror by toolplane.

[DavidB]

"Should" work?

 

Anyone had any luck with making a left handed part with mirroring a 5-axis program in MC?

[Greg Williams]

David,

 

It is only the endmills that need to be left hand. How many of the 90 tools are endmills?

[Greg Williams]

David,

 

It is only the endmills that need to be left hand. How many of the 90 tools are endmills?

[DavidB]

Actually Greg I say out of the 90, 5 are standard cutters. All the others are Iscar specials

[Greg Williams]

Oh Looks like you will be doing some more programming.

[Bruce Caulley]

Why left hand tools Greg?

[Zoober]

I just went thru what you want to do........

The left hand tools are to cure the problem that mirroring inherently has - changing climb cuts to conv. and vice versa.

What I finally ended up doing was importing my RH ops into my LH model, and re-chaining geo for each op.

This sounds like a lot of work ('specially for 170+ ops), but I could not get mirror to work very well because of the change in climb to conventional (job is Ti). because of the type of part, I could not just reverse chains and cutter side.

 

Once I got going, I found re-chaining geo on the imported ops pretty quick, and I got to keep my machining strategy exactly the same for both hands. the progframs are very close to identical, with the exception of +-'s.

[Hardmill]

quote:

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Anyone had any luck with making a left handed part with mirroring a 5-axis program in MC?

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In the past its always been best to just bring in the new geo

and reselect it. Mirroring has had issues in the past.

Be safe and save your sanity

 

Left hand tools are so youll be climb cutting when

mirroring toolpaths.

 

 

PEACE

[Jaz]

I usually do a combination of reselecting geometry and simply reversing toolpaths after mirroring the geometry. 5-axis I almost always reselect the geometry. After you mirror go back and check what side of geometry cutter is on and change it where needed. When you think you are all done with the mirrored part, put it away and come back to it tomorrow and re-check everything. Verify is your friend.

[Zoober]

+1000 on the verify Jaz

[Colin Gilchrist]

Hi Guys,

 

What I tend to do is break the new mirrored part into several different transform operations. Here is the problem: When you mirror a contour the toolpath needs to be reversed (chaining direction). When you mirror a pocket (or any surface operation) you do not want the toolpath operation to be reversed. The problem with mirroring a pocket operation is that mastercam reverses the toolpath options. So if you take the example of a pocket, the step over direction (inside-out/outside-in) gets reversed, which is not what you want. So what I do is several different transform/mirror toolpaths. I check the reverse toolpath option on the contour operations and I do not select it on the Surface/pocket operations. Its kind of a pain. I actually got a chance to talk with Brian Summers about this very issue when he visited Seattle recently. Hopefully CNC software will be able to put some more time into looking at this issue. It would be really nice to have one operation that would be able to completely produce an opposite hand part.

 

Thoughts?

 

-Colin

[Nils N]

Since I've had problems in the past with mirrored tool paths I mirror the geometry and create new tool paths. I’ve found that the mirrored geometry doesn’t always give you the same tool path as in the original. When all is said and done I opt for safe mode and just redo all the tool paths for the mirrored tool, but then I don’t have as many op’s as you.

[DavidB]

quote:

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Since I've had problems in the past with mirrored tool paths I mirror the geometry and create new tool paths.

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This is my experiance aswell.

I guess I was hoping MCX MR2 might have been better at Mirroring toolpaths than previuos versions of MC.

 

Thanks all

[Hardmill]

quote:

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I guess I was hoping MCX MR2 might have been better at Mirroring toolpaths than previuos versions of MC.

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I dont think any of us are saying it isnt, we just havent

tried it out yet. Go ahead, we dare you

 

 

PEACE

[DavidB]

Teh Guinea pig