bad surface finish

[LansB]

Hey guys. I am struggling to get a descent surface finish with a ball e.m.

 

The surface is one complete surface with nothing complex about it (kind of a sweeping twist shape). For a long time I have noticed that no matter what toolpath I use or whatever I adjust my tolerance and filter ratio to, there are always bumps on the surface. They show up in verify and on the actual part.

 

We also use a seat of Work NC out on the shop floor and it never has this problem. Is there something I am missing in the settings? It seems like a good, smooth surface should always yield the same outcome on the physical part.

 

Thanx in advance for any input guys!

[Thee Rickster ™]

Lans can you share the file and I'll see what

I can do.

 

I get great finishes on shapely contoured surfacing

paths

 

Rick

[LansB]

Will do.....thanx

[Thee Rickster ™]

Also which software created the 3-d surfaces?

[LansB]

Mastercam X2 MR2.

 

You have mail.

[Thee Rickster ™]

hang tight i may be having email server issues

Half of the shop hasn't received any today

 

Can you put it on the ftp site?

 

rick

[LansB]

I'll give it a try....haven't done that in a while.

[LansB]

username and password?

[Kannon]

username

Mastercam

 

password

swiss

[LansB]

Thanx, I'll have to write that down

[LansB]

Look at that.....wouldn't ya know I just found where I wrote that down.

 

It should be in the MCAMX2 folder < "bad surface finish"

 

Shows up for me, let me know if it works

[crazy^millman]

Lans on a part like this I would use the blend toolpath. Doing this as 2 different surface is the wrong approach IMHO when trying to do a part of this nature. You have the right idea braking the surface out like that. I will throw a toolpath on it and put it back on the FTP and see what you think.

 

HTH

[LansB]

Cool thanx!

[Thee Rickster ™]

Me too.

 

Rick

[Steve Arteman]

Lans,

I just sent an email.

Steve

[Redfire427]

I took a look at your file and I see a few things I would change. For one, I would change your tolerance on the toolpaths to .0001 for the parallel toolpath and use a 1:1 filter. Mastercam makes a terrible quality toolpath unless the tolerance is really small. It is even worse if you use HST raster. I have submitted this problem to my dealer and they are trying to figure out why. Even using this small tolerance, you won't get the same quality toolpath as WorkNC or Powermill. I can never understand why this has always been an issue with Mastercam on such a simple toolpath.

[LansB]

Tha's pretty much where I was going with this Prosin. I love Mastercam way better than the others but I have to adjust the tolerance way back and make huge programs that have to be drip fed to my machines. Even then the surface is not quite as good as the others (and not enough better than the higher tolerance to justify the length in program). I just thought there was a slight possibility that I was missing some simple secret that smoothed things out a little better.

 

I'm sure there is a way around this by using certain toolpaths a certain way and what not...just curious if I didn't really have to do that.

 

I defintely would like to hear people suggestions and tips though!

 

Thanx again,

 

[ 01-03-2008, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: LansB ]

[Redfire427]

Lans,

I avoid using Raster or parallel for a variety of reasons. I would program your part a little differently. I would most likely finish it with HST waterline from 30 to 90 degrees and then use shallow or HST scallop to finish from 0 to 35 degrees of slope. Always climb milling. File size is not an issue for us as our Makino's run off internal hard drives with huge capacity. We use .0001 or .0002 for all of our finishing toolpaths in order to achieve the surface finish and accuracy that our parts require. Processing time is a beotch.

[LansB]

Cool, thanx for the input.

 

Only about 1/2 of our Kitamura's are new and the other ones don't have a large amount of internal memory. We try to only run the surfacing parts on the new ones but can't always do that.

[Mr. Dayshift]

I have wondered about the long regen times....is anybody selecting the bare minimum to try and keep times down?

[mig]

Looks like FTP is down , can't connect to it .

[Guest]

quote:

---

Looks like FTP is down , can't connect to it .

---

Yup, already sent an email off to Jay

[Steve Arteman]

Lans,

Here is a link to what I was able to do. I extended the surfaces out the front face even distance I used .250. This allows the cutter to finish the surfaces more on an even flow without the extention I was getting the rough cut you showed first. Anyway the blend worked the best of all toolpahs I tried. Take a look. http://www.cad2cam.net/blend1/blend1.html

Steve Arteman

[Ployd]

Cool video, I would like to get Camtasia to ad some videos to our website.

 

I like the Blend toolpath also but our projects are too big and the blend toolpath can take hours to gen.