A more practical Tool Containment

[kwolf]

Hi people,

 

I want to know whether there's a way in X3 to calculate and find real tool containment boundary of selected drive surfaces with respect to the

- tool shape/size

- tolerance of calculation

- thickness on drive surfaces

 

We do this to find tool containment in another CAM package.

I don't know how to post a picture but a simple example would clarify the situation.

If I'm using a 10mm diameter ball nosed and want to machine a 4 mm radius concave fillet there's no boundary for machining.

Obviously the result is different if a convex fillet is used, this time the boundary may totally overlaps the fillet.

 

As with this new boundary, the tool machines the very selected surfaces, there's no need to select any check surfaces.

 

Is there any c-hook or workaround to get the real containment tool boundary?

 

Thanks and glad to be here again

[pip]

Have you tried the createboundary chook

[kwolf]

You da man.

Is it a new c-hook? I haven't touched MC since v9.

 

It's almost what I wanted. Far better than manually create/select job.

However it's too slow and in one case I had to shutdown MC. The CPU usage was 100% for 5 min when computing on a simple rhino sweep surface.

Great tool, hope newer versions have better response time.

[chipmagnet]

There is also SilhouetteBoundary.dll that you might try as well.

 

 

If create boundary is running to slowly you might try loosening the tolerance on it a bit, it should speed up.

[mchin-pilot]

Hi kwolf,

You mentioned using creating boundary in other CAM package, which one?

Does'nt work that smartly though in MC

[peon]

Powermill creates fairly decent boundaries much faster than MCX. Not an expert at it, but I have been playing with it lately.

[kwolf]

quote:

---

If create boundary is running to slowly you might try loosening the tolerance on it a bit, it should speed up.

---

I encountered another problem with concave fillet surfaces, according to MC help, the boundary should be smaller for concave surfaces. But the generated boundary totally overlaps the fillet.

Although all surface orientations are good the boundary is not what it should be.

Can anyone try one of the concave fillets in the sample file "LEFTOVER 3D COLLAPSE-MM" and verify this? Maybe I'm missing something.

 

TIA

 

@mchin-pilot

Just what peon said, in PowerMILL.