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Help with X3 4-axis wire


LansB
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Hey guys,

 

Ever since my shop got our first wire EDM machine, about a year ago, I have struggled with getting a good surface finish out of the 4-axis wire contour on Mastercam.

 

It seems that no matter what I do, or if the geometry is spline or arc, I always end up with a series of flats instead of a smooth surface. The only thing I have ever been able to do to somewhat fix this is either run a taper contour instead or make the filter tolerance ridiculously small. The filter tolerance thing doesn't even work for me because the machine alarms out due to a wire compensation error because of the tiny increments in moves.

 

Oh yeah, the machine is an Agie Charmille 440C if that helps.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanx!

Lans

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Lars,

 

Unfortunately I don't think that I can use anything but splines on this contour. It is a diameter sliced at 10 degrees which creates an eleptical spline. Is there a way to generate something other than a spline for this?

 

I will give the autosync rails opption a try also.

 

Thanks guys

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I sent you a part file Del.

 

It isn't a pressing matter anymore but I would still like to find a solution to the issue.

 

I made a new fixture to mount the part at 10 degrees so I can make a simple straight cut program instead of the 4-axis one.

 

I would like to find the most efficient and cleanset way of cutting things like this regardless but I do think the majority of the problem may lie with the wire machines control and not Mastercam.

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This may be a long way around the barn but it might work for you. If the final shape you want to cut lies on a 10 degree face first project this geometry up to a flat z plane that is the same z height as the top of your part. Now you may have to do a little trimming or run the find overlap c -hook to clean this up but you need to get it trimmed out to a clean chainable contour. Next if you have MC mill chain this up as a 2-D countour and turn the offset OFF. Set z to incremental zero. Now backplot and use the save geo button to save this new clean geometry to a new level. This should convert your splines to lines or arcs.

 

If you don't the same number of entities just use branch point to control your sync points.

 

This is really very easy once you do it once or twice.

 

HTH

 

If you email me the file I will see if I can help you out.

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dwain, what i did was to create a rectangle around each spline tangent to it and then create an arc tanget to 3 points on each half of the rectangle.you end up with the the same radius but with different center points in one direction. dont know for sure if that is 100% correct or not but its close.then you can use direct 4 axis

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