trochodial/high speed turning enhancement request

[Jeremy Herron@DBS Solutions™]

One my programmers is often asking me why Mastercam does not offer turning toolpaths based on the 2d highspeed milling toolpath strategies. Not to say we do not draw the geometry and do it manually every day, but it would be nice to have the software do it for you. We cut a ton of superalloys with ceramics and carbide and one of the biggest challenges is managing our in cut time and maximizing the use of our insert in this amount of time. Rolling in and out of cuts, avoiding corners in toolpaths, and all the other principle in the 2d/3d highspeed would be excellent options for these situations in turning. Now of course for a quick fix is throw a mill highspeed toolpath on your turned part, save your backplot as geometry, trim everything up how you need it and use these as chains for turning toolpaths. This is a fair amount of work sometimes depending of the complexity of your geometry. I attended a seminar last week and without naming names, I was shown a trick that I thought I would share and see how many people thought a toolpath like this would be of use to them and maybe drum up some support for CNC software to throw the lathe guys a bone. There is a regristry key that you can alter and it will allow 2d highspeed toolpathhs to cut both directions, climb and conventional. Now you would probably never want this for mill, but if you set up your chains and rounding radii right, this will give you a chain that cuts one direction filleting the corners, then does a highspeed loop and rolls back into cut, goes the other direction, and back and fourth until it has reached the end of the stock defined by your chains. Now we have one chain (of course it may take a couple of tries to get exactly what you want) that takes the least amount of cycle time possible, uses both sides of the insert minimizng the amount indexes needed, and the ability to adjust stepovers and other pararmeters of the toolpath without redrawing everything. Now it seems to me that all the logic needed to incorporate this into a toolpath is already there, and I do not claim to know how difficult it is to actaully do, but I was curious how many other people would find something like this useful.

[GoetzInd]

Sounds like an awesome enhancement. But as far as it actually getting done, I would't hold your breath. It took until just a few yrs ago to get round boring bar in lathe, sooooo.....

 

Mike

[Jeremy Herron@DBS Solutions™]

We actually ran some tests and the spindle load never climbed over 3% and we had about 9 minutes in cut in inco 718 46 Hrc, and the toolpath took maybe 5 minutes to create versus 30 minutes of drawings the geometry and no telling how long to adjust to where we had found the sweet spot.

[robk]

We have been trochoidal turning for 2+ years now and the results are outstanding.

[Chipmakr]

There is a great article about this in this months Modern Machine Shop.

[Jeremy Herron@DBS Solutions™]

We have as well. I just seems to me if we can "trick" the software into doing something that works so well, maybe we should not have to.

[robk]

We do not use Mastercam. Here is a screenshot of trochoidal turning toolpath in NX. Fully associative with no need to create any geometry.

 

[Jeremy Herron@DBS Solutions™]

I attached a picture of the backplot of the toolpath we ran in the machine.

[Jeremy Herron@DBS Solutions™]

Or maybe this time I did.

[Newbeeee™]

Neat. We'd use it.

Until I read this I didn't even think about highspeed paths for lathes.

But the toughest thing we turn is stainless - we stay clear of the nasty mtls

[SKIR68]

I use MCX5 in a mill/turn. I like the Plunge Turn toolpath. If you look under the Plunge turn rough tab, there is a Cut direction that you can set to Zig zag in either a pos. or neg. direction.

Is this not close to what you are talking about? I have only used this for about a month now, with a Seco tool designed for this with very nice results! It allows me to have more tool positions available on the turret.

[K2csq7]

Jeremy,

 

There is a regristry key that you can alter and it will allow 2d highspeed toolpathhs to cut both directions

 

Care to elaborate??? Sounds like fun!!!

[Jeremy Herron@DBS Solutions™]

I spoke with the individuals that showed me this technique last night and they gave me permission to give them credit where credit is due, so special thanks to Bill Craven, Bill Tisdale, William Scott, and the rest of Sandvik's HRSA gorup. These guys were also the driving force behind the article on this subjuct in MMS this month. If you get a chance to visit them in visit them in Fair Lawn, NJ I would recommend it, or at the very least give you local Sandvik rep a call and afford them a few minutes of your time. The highspeed principles that all of us mill guys have come to live by are just as applicable in the turning world no matter what you materials you cut. The plunge turn toolpath is a step in the right direction, but it lacks the ability to add a toolpath fillet, as well as, trochodial motion in tight corners.

 

Keith and anyone else interested send me an email I will show you how to implement this. I am a little leary of posting information on this forum about changing registry info, as this is not something just anyone should be doing, but I am more than happy to share.

[Goldorak]

I use MCX5 in a mill/turn. I like the Plunge Turn toolpath. If you look under the Plunge turn rough tab, there is a Cut direction that you can set to Zig zag in either a pos. or neg. direction.

Is this not close to what you are talking about? I have only used this for about a month now, with a Seco tool designed for this with very nice results! It allows me to have more tool positions available on the turret.

 

 

i used it 2-3 times with great success in hard stuff, i like the hanging ring prevention feature

[MIL-TFP-41]

Very cool idea.....& I like that it can be implemented "today"....and going off of that....sounds like CNC Software should talking to Sandvik to totally refine it into lathe.

[Jeremy Herron@DBS Solutions™]

I have been experimenting a little, and I have shared this with a couple of people from this thread and one problem we have both ran into is that a lathe finish path will follow the geometry fine, but you do not have the ability to use the tool inspection option available in the rough cycles. Anyone have any ideas on how we might accomplish this?

[jesse@desemco]

A new lathe toolpath with all of the logic behind dynamic contour would be great.

[SKIR68]

"NEW" lathe toolpath? your serious right?

[Colin Gilchrist]

In case you didn't notice, the Plunge Turn toolpath is new for Lathe. I realize that Lathe still needs work, but improvements are being made.

[John White WLM&T]

In case you didn't notice, the Plunge Turn toolpath is new for Lathe. I realize that Lathe still needs work, but improvements are being made.

 

You are really going to defend the amount of work that has been done on lathe since V9?

 

You guys really are in a dream world.

 

Can you please go look at the Esprit website. It's on the Internet. And make a list of turning improvements made in the last 10 years.

 

John

[jesse@desemco]

I think plunge turn is a great new toolpath. I also like the new options for spindle speed and feed rate overrides for groove and partoff. It would be nice to get some of the functionality of the dynamic paths into lathe (Dynamic Turn?) in one of the next few versions.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Jesse, I'll talk it over with the Lathe developers.

 

John, if you have something constructive to add, then I'm all ears.

[John White WLM&T]

I think plunge turn is a great new toolpath. I also like the new options for spindle speed and feed rate overrides for groove and partoff. It would be nice to get some of the functionality of the dynamic paths into lathe (Dynamic Turn?) in one of the next few versions.

 

I was asking my dealer for speed override on part off in V9. Had our dealer spend hours trying to accomplish this with the post but had no luck. Dealer finally gave up.

 

So ten years later it's there. Also been about ten years since the release of that Iscar groove turn tool.

 

Just released round boring bars? Come on. How about a thread chart that works for external threading. It hasn't worked since V9.

 

What about a new forum category to address the progress of bug fixes? If we took money from a customer of ours for a product and a year went by I would be expected to produce a progress report of some kind. Not just a statement saying we will ship it maybe soon. No date. You will get it when you get it. If it doesn't work you better keep paying us or we won't fix it.

 

And a new catagory for enhancement requests to the forum and have CNC post progress reports on the development timelines of these enhancements. Then the end user could make an informed decision on whether to continue maintenance or not.

 

I will start now working on a long constructive list of enhancements for lathe and wire edm. You get the lights turned back on in those departments and boot up those computers. May have to update them from Win98.

 

John

[Colin Gilchrist]

John,

 

I understand your frustration, I know it might not seem like it, but I've been in your shoes. I can't talk about internal political decisions or how the product is developed. What I can do is make sure that some of the right people see this thread. So please, a list of enhancements for Wire and Lathe would help. I know we've done that before, now it's time for version 2.0.

[SKIR68]

What about FBM and FBD for Lathe????? What about stock recognition when i'm milling it away in lathe?? THOSE would be basic enhancements.( just my 2cents.!)