Questions about verisurf

[motor-vater]

Whats happening all. I am at a cross roads, 90% of all machining/programing I do is for 5 axis cylinder head porting with MasterCam X4 MUI3. I am happy with the tool pathing abilities of MCX4, but trying to make surfaces with it from a reverse engineering stand point is wearing on my last nerve. I have spent countless days and nights banging my head against the key board only to get laughed at by the Master... Taking points clouds converting to splines, blending spline, breaking splines, surfacing, offset surfacing, more effing splines, just to make more surfaces, that in all reality SUCK!!! Not to mention every step along the way loosing tolerance in the quest for a smooth machinable final surface (its my unicorn). Then when I finally get something worth tool pathing, God forbid I want to change something....ERRRR!!!

 

So I guess my question is can verisurf help simplify this process for me??? The cross roads is that I can upgrade to x5 hope its got some better tools to help, get the next engine scanner with rapid works(would save alot of time digitizing), Or bypass all and get verisurf???? One of my head porting friends told me to get verisurf, but that is all he said. So I have no idea how or why this can help me???? Thanks in Advance

[Guest SAIPEM]

Next-Engine will be totally worthless for head porting applications.

It simply can't accurately scan ports where the port continues past the current horizon of the scanner orientation.

Most of the porting guys use a Faro Arm or something similar.

 

As a surface modeler and editor, Mastercam is only slightly better than stone knives and bear skins.

Simple functions like repointing a surface don't exist.

 

Keep Verisurf for actually Digitizing the data and keeping it in a familiar format.

Verisurf is a really powerful tool and its integration with Mastercam is a plus but you are

limited by the lack of surfacing tools.

 

There are a lot of powerful point cloud tools out there now.

Use something like RapidForm for taking the point clouds directly to NURBS data.

 

Get Rhino3D for surface and spline Editing.

Rhino has some point cloud tools but they aren't up to the job for head porting.

The surface and spline editing tools are very good and will make life much easier.

Mastercam can read the native Rhino *.3dm files.

 

Use Mastercam for what it was designed for, creating toolpaths.

[Chris Rizzo]

Have you looked at Master3dgauge?. Your dealer and the verisurf fellows might be able to give you a demonstration.

[motor-vater]

Have you looked at Master3dgauge?. Your dealer and the verisurf fellows might be able to give you a demonstration.

My control has a built in CMM so that is not the problem, its what to do with the data after words that drives me up the walls. There has got to be a better way to create and manipulate surfaces, which is the basis of my question. Thanks though...

[Colin Gilchrist]

Your best bet is Rapidform.

 

I've looked into the Reverse Engineering solutions that are available, and here are your choices:

 

Rapidform

Polyworks

Geomagic

 

All three have their pluses and minuses, but Rapidform is by far the most intuitive and easy to learn. Polyworks is the preferred tool here at Boeing, but it costs Texa$.

 

A seat of Rapidform will set you back about $25k if I remember right. I think Polyworks/Geomagic are almost double that...

[gaijin_2007]

http://www.copycad.com/ from Delcam is also worth a look IMO.

Works with triangles, surfaces and solids all in one and has some very cool features if I recall from a demo I once saw.

Definitely worth a look as it sounds like it could be exactly what you're looking for?

[Ron Branch @ 5th Axis]

We have a lot of customer doing heads with Verisurf and using our Custom Surfacing tools and other things with no problems once they are trained. We do give you the ability to do a lot of complex surfaces and other things with free form shapes. I am not going to speak negatively about any other software, but if you have Mastercam then the obvious choice would be Verisurf since we are integrated right into Mastercam. You can bring the point cloud in and then do whatever you want with it. Here are some screen shots on a porting job. How you bring the point cloud in is your choice, but the quality of the cloud is only going ot be a good as what you use to collect it. With a laser collecting device you need line of sight. With a hard probing device like a the Master3DGage arm with a +/- .0007 volumetric accuracy you are insured a good collection of the point. The other things is that as you collect the data and start making the mesh(STL) Verisurf gives you the ability to check back to that Mesh to see the quality of the model as you build it again right inside of Mastercam. Also with Mastercam powerful machining to STL capabilities you really do not need a surface model to machine the part you could machine it right to the mesh in the right configuration.

 

#1 Here is the Point Cloud.

 

 

#2 We then right Click on the points and create a Mesh.

 

 

#3 Then right click on the Mesh and pick the AutoSurface tool.

 

 

#4 Here is our surface Model using color faces for the surfaces. We have some options on the Autosurface that can allow us to ramp up the exactness of the mesh or turn it down to give us more free form surfaces. Again this is all inside on Mastercam.

 

 

From here we could do a lot of different things. We could make a solid out of the cavity to make up internal ports on a head or other things. Also the Mesh has tools in it to smooth it as well as create splines from the mesh. Is there other software that does a good job? Sure, but what software gives you the ability to do everything inside of Mastercam? No learning curve on the Mastercam side just some learning on the Verisurf side. Hopefully that was a clear enough example of what Verisurf can do. If you would like a online meeting where someone can show you some different things let me know and I can arrange that.

 

HTH

[motor-vater]

Ron Yes, Yes, Yes that is what I am talking about... Can it convert it to a single surface from that... I am interested in finding out more please...

[Colin Gilchrist]

I'd be interested to see also if Verisurf could turn that into a single surface. I know Rhino has some of that capability, but again, I like Ron's point of it all being inside Mastercam.

 

Did you know that you can create a flowline style port toolpath on an example like Ron showed (patchwork of surfaces)? You don't have to spend the time to mesh all those patches. How? By creating a separate set of surfaces that mastercam terms a 'Cut Pattern'.

 

Think of it like this, take your port surfaces and surround them with a bent tube. This tube will be a simple swept surface. The toolpath takes the flow direction from this other surface, but projects and compensates the tool to your compensation surfaces (patchwork).

 

How much would it help if you didn't have to built a single surface to cut good ports?

[Guest SAIPEM]

I'd be interested to see also if Verisurf could turn that into a single surface. I know Rhino has some of that capability, but again, I like Ron's point of it all being inside Mastercam.

 

Did you know that you can create a flowline style port toolpath on an example like Ron showed (patchwork of surfaces)? You don't have to spend the time to mesh all those patches. How? By creating a separate set of surfaces that mastercam terms a 'Cut Pattern'.

 

Think of it like this, take your port surfaces and surround them with a bent tube. This tube will be a simple swept surface. The toolpath takes the flow direction from this other surface, but projects and compensates the tool to your compensation surfaces (patchwork).

 

How much would it help if you didn't have to built a single surface to cut good ports?

 

 

Cutting patches like that is a recipe for disaster.

There are so many redundant control points and vertices that it will definitely cause problems.

 

I use Rhino to merge all the patches, re-point the aggregate surface and then rebuild it by generating the cross-sections ISO curves for lofting.

 

MC reads the native Rhino file so, while not seamless, the end result is a much more usable surface for machining.

[Colin Gilchrist]

While I agree it is an ugly set of surfaces, Mastercam does a great job with the 5x Port Toolpath of ignoring all the individual surface normals/points for calculating the Toolpath. I can calculate a beautiful, filtered path on those surfaces, without needing to bring them into Rhino at all. It is not a recipe for disaster, if you know what Toolpath to use, and the tricks to get it to work right. That was the point I was trying to make in my last post. It is actually really easy and works much better than I ever expected. It also sure saves a lot of modeling time...

[Ron Branch @ 5th Axis]

Sorry I was out of town for the last couple days. Sapiem what we see here is a quick and easy way to take collected data and make some surfaces out of it. Again there are many tools inside of the software that allow many ways to create surfaces. What I showed here is a method that allows very little work on the users part. Also if you looked at the toolpaths in Mastercam this becomes a non-factor. Now if we used the STL method in Mastercam for drive to machine with a dummy surface to control the vector of the toolpath or a chain to drive the toolpath then again the surfaces are a non-factor. With reversing anything people are always looking for the magic button and Verisurf is not a magic button, but gives you so many more abilities to do things that for the price is well worth the investment. Funny ugly is in the eye on the beholder and for anyone to take nothing and turn it into something in less than about 2 minutes using Verisurf how really ugly are those surfaces? Again I could go into deeper detail about all of this, but I think I made my point about the abilities of Verisurf that were not correctly understood. I will be putting together a video soon and I will share it on this and I might even throw some toolpaths on those ugly surfaces just to show anyone interested. One toolpath that comes to mind of the top of my head is the new highspeed toolpath converted over to 5 axis through a spline that cares nothing about surfaces and make really nice paths. I will keep you guys posted if you are really interested. Thanks for the response in this thread and if anyone wants some more information just email and I will be glad to follow up with you. Happy Thanksgiving and I will be in Germany next week, Canada the week after, then Portland.

[Guest SAIPEM]

Verisurf is a great tool for reverse engineering.

When it comes to creating usable and optimal surfaces for machining, I prefer to use a tool designed for that.

 

Whatever works for you at the end of the day is a usable tool.

The 5-Axis porting toolpath is really no different than the standard 5-Axis Flowline.

All the same options exist.

 

That said, you will absolutely get better toolpaths from a re-pointed and/or reprocessed surface.

 

However, even if that is not a concern, re-pointing and/or reprocessing the surfaces has the added benefit of reducing the file size.

Anyone who has used Verisurf knows how large those MCX files get.

[Ron Branch @ 5th Axis]

I guess it comes down to wanting to work in one software and learn everything there is about one software. Also I did not say you couldn't make it one surface again tons of tools inside of Verisurf for reversing this is only scratching the surface with the example I gave here. Have a good one off to church.

[motor-vater]

Yes I would like to able to machine a toolpath off those surfaces, of-coarse... I have found that a flowline did not work on an STL file atleast the way I was trying to do it. And I have also tried it in advanced multi axis with no real success. it still looks at it as a thousand little surfaces with normals again probably just they way I was attempting to do it. I am on x4 mui3 and am hesitant to upgrade because it has been my experience that its always better to wait for the first upgrade so as to avoid all the crashing and what not.... But 4 was incomplete as far as their porting config in advanced multi axis... But back on track here if i could make surfaces that easily and then machine them too... I would be in heaven..... I looked at Rhino and am impressed with its capabilities especially combined with tsplines, the fact you can manipulate surfaces by pulling on them and things like that are awesome. But when I downloaded it and played with it for free I found it very unfamiliar and down right confusing/frustrating they make it look so ez on youtube Secondly I could only export as an IGS which when brought into mastercam the surface was interpreted as an STL. So I would assume I would still need some other software to convert it back to a surface???

[BernieT]

Under 'Help' in Rhino3D is several tutorials that will make life easier. Do them first. Especially the 'rubber ducky'.

 

Also, IGS files work very well between Rhino and MC. But you don't need to use IGS, MC can read Rhino's 3dm files.

 

 

HTH

[Tyler Robertson]

I want to chime in here:

 

1. I love Rhino - at the price point it can do some really great things in cad with organic shaped surfaces

2. Using 1 surface will often make things easier to toolpath, however...

3. Using advanced multiaxis paths, or the surface highspeed convert to advance multiaxis like Ron Said, can make nice toolpaths on that patchwork. You may have to change a couple settings. I have users programming on thousands of patchwork surfaces

 

 

This is almost 10,000 surfaces. Mind you it takes forever, but you can get a good path (if you know how to set your edge / chaining tolerances)

 

I didn't know Verisurf could do that. Awesome

[Guest SAIPEM]

I guess it comes down to wanting to work in one software and learn everything there is about one software. Also I did not say you couldn't make it one surface again tons of tools inside of Verisurf for reversing this is only scratching the surface with the example I gave here. Have a good one off to church.

 

Ron,

 

Please don't misunderstand my point.

 

Like I said, VeriSurf is a great Rev Eng tool.

I recommend it all the time.

It can certainly do a lot and creating machinable surfaces is one of them.

It's just a bit lacking in certain surface editing and manipulation tools.

 

I like Rhino because it gives me that little bit extra that allows me to finesse the surface data

in a way that makes it much easier for what I like and need to do.

 

You also need to keep in mind that not everyone will machine in Mastercam.

A lot of my Rev Eng work has been nothing more than digitizing and providing a clean model

to the customer as I have no idea what they will machine it with.

 

Off to the in-laws!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!