Feedrate Intelligence?

[Dave.L]

One feature I am really looking for with all toolpaths is feedrate intelligence. Often with any geometry you have long straight moves followed by abrupt changes in direction or tight corners.

 

I am starting to use the Dynamic Toolpaths but I still see the need for automatic feedrate reduction. Later today / tomorrow I will be trying a suggestion from John Paris. That is, using "Adjust Feed On Arc Move" within "Tool Settings" -> Regenerating the OP -> Locking the OP -> then turning off that feature.

 

I have done this with a couple of contour OPS and one dynamic mill OP but have yet to cut the part. Manually using "Change at point" or "Toolpath editor" seems pretty exhausting.

 

It would seem however that there would be a better way to have this be automatic within the toolpath parameters.

[Guest]

Dave, have you checked out the Highfeed machining option?

 

on a larger more complex tool path this may well be exactly what you're looking to do.

[Dave.L]

John,

 

Thanks for the tip I will check it out.

[peon]

The highfeed option also has a tendency of NOT retracting at the end of the toolpath, therefore, crashing through your part when starting the next toolpath if using the same tool. BE CAREFUL. According to CNC, this has been fixed in X5.

[Dave.L]

Peon,

 

How do you aviod this when using this option?

[peon]

Unfortunately, I don't use the option anymore. It worked awesome when speeding your feedrates while air cutting and referencing an .stl file using rest rough paths. Now, the slow air cutting looks embarrassing at the machine. I'm actually hoping the HST Rest Roughing path gets improved so the tool will stay down, therefore not needing the highfeed option. I mentioned this to my reseller a year ago and they were optimistic that the rest roughing will be improved in X5.

[Chris Rizzo]

When programming underpowered machines I used to live by highfeed and achieve some pretty high mmr's all things considering. That was back in version 9. Takes some time to get it setup, but it is fantastic.

[Chris In-House Solutions]

The Highfeed option is a great option. I used in back in V9 and it cut several minutes off of programs. I would never rough with it but used it often to semi-finish or finish parts. Like Chris said once the setup is done it works great.

 

Start off slow then gradually up the feedrates. If your scared of it not retracting then wait till X5 comes out and try it then.

[Newbeeee™]

Dave,

a bit OT but is this driven by your machines struggling to accurately contour?

If they're fanuc you could look at G05 options?

 

As for highfeed, we've never tried it but our re-seller said it is very good.

We better start looking into it by the sounds of it.

[Dave.L]

quote:

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Dave,

a bit OT but is this driven by your machines struggling to accurately contour?

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Nope. But when you feed a straight line at 100 IPM and then hit a .25 rad no machine or tool will like it.

[Dave.L]

John,

 

I tried your suggestion and when I post with locked operations MC gets errors. If I un-lock, no problem.

 

This tool (Min Arc Feedrate) is not all that great but it would be better if the option was in each operation and not global.

 

I looked at the high feed option and I don't want to try this without experimentation first. Also, anyone that has some good examples of this it would be appreciated if you could share them.

 

From the help file, it states that MC will alter the depth of cut and I don't know how much I like this.

[Richard Thomas - Mastercam UK]

I've been playing with Highfeed recently and I can say that Higfeed does not adjust the Depth of Cut of the toolpath. It does need to know about the depth of cut of the toolpath, which initially is based on a % of the tool diameter (it doesn't take it from the toolpath parameters automatically).

Therefore you can adjust the depth of cut field to match your actual operation.

 

It's a shame it's still very C-hookish in that it locks your operation. CNC really should integrate this better into the toolpaths.