Check surface question.

[MotorCityMinion]

I've selected a vertical surface as a check, aprx. 90. deg., adjacent to the surface that I'm machining. With .01 stock to leave on both the check and the drive, I'm getting a toolpath that machines over the top of my check. How can I totally keep my tool away from the check, both top and sides?

 

Question 2.

I have quite abit of spline geometry in this part. The surfaces look nice and radiused but my machining looks faceted after machining, like the points on the spline, not in backplot or verify,. What do I need to do the eliminate or reduce the facets? Tolerance control?

 

Thanks for the help, MCM.

[Zoober]

Q1: Use containment

Q2: Tolerance will help, but what cycle are you using? HSM or regular?

[Thee Rickster ™]

Which path are you using?

[MotorCityMinion]

Files at work, srry for the lack of info, I'll check it when I get there.

[MotorCityMinion]

Flowline be da path.

[Jim at Gentex]

quote:

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What do I need to do the eliminate or reduce the facets?

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Tightening the tolerance should help.

You may also be able to clean it up by using a smaller scallop height.

Lastly, if it's a 5-axis flowline path, you can add some lead / lag angle to keep the center of the ball from leaving dwell marks.

 

HTH

[Dracbus]

There are a couple of things i would try. Usually you can make the check or drive surfs .0001 different and it changes alot of your toolpaths. It usually depends on what type of toolpath and what you are doing with it. And to the guy who said to use a containment boundry i dont believe it is an option with flowline. Actually if it was me and it was an open radius i wouldnt even use any checks unless there is a surf that might interfere. Which from what you discribe seems like the case. If its a radius into a 90 deg surf dont tag the 90 deg surf. If your worried its going to dig into the vertical surf then tag the one above it. The final thing i would try would be to mess with your tolerance under the toolpath. maybe bump it up or lower it, see if anything changes. If it picks up alot and you dont think it needs to, mess with the gap setting just make sure it dosnt try to run thru any of your part.

 

As for the spline question. It kinda depends on what your doing with the spline? If your makeing a 2d toolpath with a spline i sometimes simplify the splines. Which turns it into the closest lines and arcs if possible. It could be a tolerance issue. If your doing a 3d toolpath and its coming out with big scallops then you should probly tighten up your passes.

 

There could be many more things you can try these are just a few thigs off the top of my head. if i had a little better idea of what your doing i could possible help you more. For all i know a flowline might just be the wrong toolpath for your application. Anyway hope some of this helps...

[MotorCityMinion]

Here's a link to the pics.

 

The bad thing about messing with the cut tolerances is that I don't have the luxury of walking over to the stock rack, grabbing some new material, and starting over again. Gotta get it right the first time. I'll just overkill the tolerances for now.

 

http://www.emastercam.com/ubb/ultimatebb.p...9938;p=1#000016

 

There is a shoulder on both sides of this part that I need to stay off of for now. I've tried setting the shoulder as the check. I then set the stock to leave on check surfaces at .001, .01, .10. I also tried just offsetting the check surface by different values. All of the above did nothing but create a bunch of monkey business with the cutter path.

 

It shouldn't have to be this hard. Click on a surface, stay off that surface, period. I hope X3 has both containments and checks for all cutter paths

[Dracbus]

Sorry bout the delayed response. If youd like i could take a look at the file just put it on the ftp site somewhere and tell us where it is and which operations your having trouble with.

[MotorCityMinion]

Drac, thanks for the offer. No problem on the delayed response. I always read the forum within a few days just to see if there are any related topics or new post that interest me. Any help is good. Besides, my employer does not pay me to do this and won't support my educational requirements, so F 'EM, I'll find the info when it suits my time frame. Besides that, I don't want them to think that this is where to go for FREE tech/ engineering services. I consider most of the peeps here to be a good bunch of guys who like what they do, and taking advantage of that experience, for their monetary gains, isn't high on my list of good moral attributes. (Yes , I had a rough night and woke up pi#$ed off.)

 

 

FTP Site.... I can download all the files I want, but when I Try to upload, it never works, so I gave up on that. Usually when I need to upload a file, I'm already in Panic mode, and get ticked off even faster when It doesn't work.

 

Thanks for lending an ear. MCM