Does anyone use Fanuc's Nurbs Interpolation?

[cncappsjames]

1 hour ago, Paul Anderson said:

I experimented with Nurbs back in 1998 while working in a mold shop. We had Makinos, Yasdas and Okadas and they were well suited for 3D machining. All controls had 16i with RISC. We were able to get posts written through our Unigraphics reseller to support Nurbs. I found quickly that it was such a niche application that it wasn't worth pursuing it long term. We had already improved throughput by about 50% with HPCC and high speed machining, chip thinning that the gains from NURBS wasn't going to gain us much more. There are limitations too. NURBS doesn't like sharp corners, only smooth, free flowing surfaces. What geometry doesn't have sharp corners somewhere? I did a few impressive demos with it but we just couldn't work it into our processes.

When I was at Mori Seiki in the mid-late 1990's and working with NURBS programs, UG (NX's Predecessor for anyone younger than GenX), SurfCAM (barely on life support) and Northwoods Designs (no longer available) were the only ways to get the code we needed. Mastercam was on the fence and had to  make a choice (and they chose right IMHO) put more development time into NURBS or 5-Axis and Multi-Tasking Lathes.

Like you said, it's a REALLY niche market and for all intents and purposes really not tremendously practical. FANUC hasn't put in any real development into it since the early-mid 2000's. FANUC has put all the development in the other smoothing algorithms it offers (NANO Smoothing, Smooth Interpolation, Smooth Tolerance Control, etc...) and has as good or better performance than NURBS offered.

[crazy^millman]

5 minutes ago, cncappsjames said:

When I was at Mori Seiki in the mid-late 1990's and working with NURBS programs, UG (NX's Predecessor for anyone younger than GenX), SurfCAM (barely on life support) and Northwoods Designs (no longer available) were the only ways to get the code we needed. Mastercam was on the fence and had to  make a choice (and they chose right IMHO) put more development time into NURBS or 5-Axis and Multi-Tasking Lathes.

Like you said, it's a REALLY niche market and for all intents and purposes really not tremendously practical. FANUC hasn't put in any real development into it since the early-mid 2000's. FANUC has put all the development in the other smoothing algorithms it offers (NANO Smoothing, Smooth Interpolation, Smooth Tolerance Control, etc...) and has as good or better performance than NURBS offered.

Yet one builder keep talking about how they handle it so well. Then you find out their machine calibration process for large 5 Axis machine is levels and squares. Interferometer and volumetric calibration seem to be a foreign concept that the builder that will go un-named.

[GoetzInd]

Quote

Rubber meet road. Road meet rubber. I love all the canned demos people can do, but when the shet hits the fan and no one else can figure it out then we are the ones people call. Crazy times I tell you.

Comon Ron, canned demos on cool but easy parts are fun! Spending a whole day trying to figure out how to machine one tricky feature within requirements? Less fun.

 

Mike

[Newbeeee™]

21 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

Like you said, it's a REALLY niche market and for all intents and purposes really not tremendously practical. FANUC hasn't put in any real development into it since the early-mid 2000's

As you say, there was LOTS of "noise" about this back in the day.

But what % actually used it, or needed it, or understood it etc?

[cncappsjames]

I think relatively few CAD/CAM companies were interested in doing the heavy lifting required io support it at the time contributed to it's obscurity. Surfcasting made sense; they were born out of a Southern California Mold Shop in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1990's IIRC. UG made sense because they were McDonnell-Douglas go to CAD/CAM solution and that function paired well with a lot of airfoil stuff. 

[Mick]

On 8/4/2024 at 6:34 AM, cncappsjames said:

I think relatively few CAD/CAM companies were interested in doing the heavy lifting required io support it at the time contributed to it's obscurity. Surfcasting made sense; they were born out of a Southern California Mold Shop in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1990's IIRC. UG made sense because they were McDonnell-Douglas go to CAD/CAM solution and that function paired well with a lot of airfoil stuff. 

Reminds me of StepNC. Oh the memories

[cncappsjames]

1 hour ago, Mick said:

Reminds me of StepNC. Oh the memories

How many hundreds of thousands of man-hours were WASTED on that total garbage?

[crazy^millman]

22 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

How many hundreds of thousands of man-hours were WASTED on that total garbage?

but,but,but it was a head of its time. Going to make it point and click for all programming needs. Reminds me of the manager from a Space Company where his engineering team was asking for 5 Axis programming help about a decade ago. Came in and first question out of him was why are you doing this? You will be out of a job in 5 years. AI will be doing all of this and there will be no need for programmers like yourself. The engineers all face planted the palm of the hands completely embarrassed. After a conversation where I dispelled that we did work for them. Same Space Company was not giving any Mastercam Shop 5 axis work, because a NX fanboi told them Mastercam couldn't do it. Head of purchasing calls me after we did their most complex part with Mastercam on their equipment asking and I quote "Mastercam can program 5 axis machines?" After a 20 minute conversation sales was informed to send 5 axis parts to shops that had Mastercam. I think that one conversation help Mastercam sale about 50 seats since then.