Mastercam for Laser Cladding / Surface Welding

[Tyler Robertson]

Anyone here do laser cladding/welding with Mastercam?

 

I've been involved with some projects and the results are wild, but some of the functionality of Mastercam has to be very specifically tweaked in order to have desirable program output.

 

Anyone have any success stories of using Mastercam for this type of work?

[Bob Hedrick]

I am interested in this topic and would like to discuss it with you. I agree that a lot of tweaking is required. Maybe we can work together. I'm pretty familiar with the application.

[Tyler Robertson]

Hey Bob - would love to discuss it further and share some successes we've had doing this with robots. I'll drop you a line

[RObert TImby]

When I worked for a place awhile ago, where I programmed for a EB welder using Mastercam. It took regular G and M codes so all I had to do some editing like the power settings, beam on/off and feed call outs. It worked out pretty good. I don't know if this what you are talking about in this thread or not.

[Greg_J]

Oh Snap!!

[Tyler Robertson]

Yep, that's exactly it. Granted I've been using robots, but the general material principles are the same. Beam/on/off has been what is the most crucial.

 

In one case we wanted looping transitions for the robot to create smooth passes, but needing the beam turned on at very specific times, with changing feerates in between passes. Become difficult post work to accomplish

[Bob Hedrick]

Let me make one thing clear. MY WORK IN THIE FIELD IS TOTALLY OUTSIDE OF MY WORK FOR CNC Software. Some of you play baseball, hunt, fish, etc. I do Manufacturing Engineering research with my wife, who is a professsor in Manufacturing Systems engineering and has several years of industrial experience in machining, assembly and robotics. Sometimes, it even results in Mastercam sales for In-House Solutions, and some of it may find its way into Mastercam someday.

[Bob Hedrick]

Let's not take this off-topic. Anyone with more information, chime in!

[Greg_J]

Your from LaSalle?

 

I grew up in Windsor/LaSalle area. I use to go to the Strawberry fest every year.

[Bob Hedrick]

I've been here for 15 years. I grew up in the east end of Windsor, went to University in Waterloo, worked for In-House in Cambridge and ended up in LaSalle when my wife got a job at Ford Essex Engine. Most of my family is still in the area so it was like coming 'home'. I haven't missed a Strawberry fest yet. Now I know where your Wings logo comes from

[Greg_J]

I grew up in Amhurstburg, then we settled in the west end of Windsor right near Malden park. I went to Assumption then St.Clair college.

 

You must know the shops well in Windsor? It must be a ghost town? I was working at Wings (Omega tool corp.) when I left to come out here. I miss that type of machining, oil field is quite different.

[Greg_J]

Can someone give an example of some laser cladding/welding work?

[Tyler Robertson]

Weird - I posted a video, my post didn't show up

 

[Greg_J]

Here is an example of a part that we make that we get welded and we re-machine.

 

We take a block of 4140 30x12x36 and we have 6 inch dia holes through equally spaced and a intersecting hole from the oposite direction 5.125 dia. We get all the holes welded with .125 per side Incoloy and remachined to a 32um surface finish.

 

Could a machine in the video do a process like that? or are there places that do Laser Cladding / Surface Welding that could do the part above?

[Tyler Robertson]

They probably could - would you have a cad file able to send? I could contact a couple places I know

[Greg_J]

Would the places you know have machining capabilities as well? One of the problems we have is if there were a air bubble in the spray it would have to be sent back and re-sprayed so often we have the company that does the welding also do the machining.

[Rick Henrickson The Boeing Co.]

Bob Hedrik

 

Do you know of anyone laying electrical traces with a similar process to metal deposition?

[Tyler Robertson]

quote:

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Would the places you know have machining capabilities as well? One of the problems we have is if there were a air bubble in the spray it would have to be sent back and re-sprayed so often we have the company that does the welding also do the machining.

---

The companies I've worked with do not do machining, but I also don't know if they would ever let their process have inconsistencies like that.

 

check out www.joiningtechnologies.com

 

They do amazing stuff - can I pass on your contact info to them?

[Greg_J]

Sure Tyler, you can give them my contact info.