4th axis and WCS

[CAM CRAZY]

I have a decent understanding of how WCS works and have had good success using it. With that said I came across a problem today. I have an A axis setup and I ran a top operation (wcs,TP, and CP were all set at "TOP" then I did a operation on the front (wcs = "top". tp and cp = "front") and that worked fine. then I did an operation on the bottom and this is were I got a problem. I had the wcs ="top". and the tp and cp at "bottom" and it flipped my X axis coordinates to the positive numbers as everything else was on the negative side. Soooo, my question is do I have to create new toolplanes for the bottom and back in order to keep it rotating along the correct axis or is there a more efficient way to do this?

[crazy^millman]

The famous a$$backwards bottom and back C-plane and T-plane problem that Mastercam has. Well best way is to go into the c-planes(make sure you are in top) then Rotate C-plane -90 on the X axis this will give you back I name it Correct Back. I then go -90 again from that C-plane again along the X axis and that will give you the bottom and I call that Correct Bottom. Another way to get bottom to go back to top C-plane then rotate the C-plane 180 along the X and that will give you the correct Bottom C-plane.

 

HTH

[edmBosto]

Thanks Millman as I am taking notes on this as I hopefully will need that information very soon.

H O P E F U L L Y

[MLS]

As an alternative to address the problem Crazy is talking about...I prefer to create my own WCS and C/T-planes using 2 lines so I can name them what I want and be able to refer to them more easily. It also makes it easier to visually see or change them since you have access to the geometry which they were created from.

[CAM CRAZY]

Thanks for the input!! I have done the creation of lines for the c/t-planes for other jobs not on the A axis and that is nice in case I need to move my origin it's a lot easier to regenerate toolpaths. Rotating the c/t-plane looks nice for when there is features at different angles on the A axis. I will keep both in mind.

THANKS AGAIN

[Alvaro Gil - Cimquest-inc.com]

Here are a few tips:

 

The default planes work well for only two cenerios:

 

HMC Post (maps top to front) with a machine that rotates about the Y axis.

 

Regular Post (no plane mappings) with a machine that has a rotary axis about the z axis.

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Everything else you will have to create your own rotation planes by rotating or using the plane creation tools in the WCS manager...

 

What I usually do is use the rotate command, or make a new coordinate system with the geometry button in WCS Manager, or the button in the WCS menu. When using geometry there are a few things you can do:

 

Pick 3 points, 2 lines, 1 circle or 1 flat surface.

 

TIP:

2 lines is pretty nice, because you can think of these as the new X and Y axis.

 

I have not seen this in writing anywhere but it works every time:

Make believe you are chaining the X axis first in the positive direction, then the Y axis in the positive direction (find the middle and click towards the origin of the line...) If you pick them as if you are chaining them, the correct directions of the X, Y and Z will be the very first choice.