ramping on surface

[Jeremy Grigsby]

I have been out of mill for awhile, and only using lathe now. I think my shop could use mastercam mill for programming. My question is, let's say i make a 3 inch square. I extrude it as a solid z-3.0 inches. I apply a draft angle of 10 degrees to the solid extrusion. I want to cut around this solid from z 0 to z -3. in a continuous ramp of .250 from starting point at one corner, back to itself. Is this a toolpath that is easily created. Right now I manually draw a ramp contour in mastercam design, and export the point data and punch it into a hurco. It is quite time consuming to say the least. I need to collect all the usable data I can to convince a purchase would save time. Thanks for any that reply.

[JAMES GABEL]

You could just use surfaces finish flow line. You can set it to go down the angle in a spiral. You could also use surface finish contour to go down just as easy. You should always use a programming software. I would highly recommend using mill to program any work on a cnc.

[Jeremy Grigsby]

Yeah I reccomend it too, but there is a price tag. Some are afraid of change and spending lots of money.

[crazy^millman]

Just tell them to invest in Chinese companies to make money they are doing they same thing having you do it this way. Been there done that got the T'shirt. That is how I go into Mastercam expect I was using Autocad and would spend upwards 130 hours sometimes writing 3d surfacing programs. I use to make 4 axis roll dies this way and not fun. Really sucks when you get 120 hours into something and realize you made a big mistake and have to start over. How I got I tried to get Mastercam in our Shop. I was here 120 hours into a program and made a trig mistake and needed to redo about 80 hours of work. Jim Gamlbe came in drew the part in about 45 minutes and gave me good code to make the part in about another 45 minutes. I got a P.O. cut and we leased it. about 2 month after we had the owner decided he did not want to go in that direction with the company. 9-11 happened and I went somewhere else that lead me here.

 

Point is going backwards is for the Birds and any company that can not see having a Cam program verse someone drawing the points out and programming by hand is going backwards. You are going backward in your profession. This is backwards thinking on their part and not smart business sense. I know we are not suppose to talk $$$ here. But for maybe more than $5k and Less than $7K you could get the Level 1 Mastercam. Now our shop rate is $100/hr. So in 50 to 70 hours in our shop you piad for Mastercam. So all that time the machine sit while you hand type programs, and all that time it sits while you redo mistakes cost money. A lot more money than having Mastercam and that is just bad business, and is going backwards.

 

Just my thoughts on the subject sorry if I come across the wrong way in not my intentions.

[Mic]

Surfaces finish flow line will only work if you have fillets between the 4 wall surfaces. Otherwise it will break up the machining and run 1 surface at the time.

I would go for HST waterline and set transitions to tangential ramp and set the ramp angle to 5

[Jeremy Grigsby]

No offense taken Ron. The shop I work at makes great products and does very well at it. I just have to move slowly to get this stuff implemented because they don't really know much technology-wise past 1989. They did buy Lathe which is comparably priced to level 1 mill. I really need to get level 3 to do the things I want to do. I guess maybe I should try to set up a demo or something, but then again they don't really get what is going on. I'll keep trying. even if were talking 20,000 dollars (random amount) we will make it up in a year I'm sure. Doing alot of production aluminum jobs right now, and thye started out using 30 deg high speed tools..... We are moving in the right direction and i'm trying to plant the software seed in the right heads.