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Machine crash with Vericut?


Bob W.
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I recently purchased Vericut and I love it! It is easy to use and I get great results so far. One thing that concerns me a bit is getting a false sense of security and crashing a machine as a result. I was curious if shops have crashed machines while running Vericut, or having access to Vericut. If so, why? What was missed? I ask because I would like to learn from others' experience so I can avoid the same mistakes.

 

One issue I have seen while machining 5-axis on my horizontal is I was drilling holes at B0. and drilling more holes at B180. The B-axis tried to index the wrong direction and alarmed the machine at the B-axis limit. This is a horizontal machine with a rotary table on the pallet and if the spindle had been anywhere near the rotary table it would have caused a crash. Luckily I was at the machine and the spindle was fully retracted. This had been run in Vericut but it didn't catch the B-axis indexing issue. It showed the B-axis indexing in the opposite direction.

 

Thanks,

Bob

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Just like what you described, I have seen times in the past that Vericut was not 100% set up and missed a detail. It's easy to get a Vericut Machine and control Def about 90-95% there. It's the last bit that are the non-normal situations that you have to encounter to know about. Things like conflicts in machine code that cause cancels of offsets/cycles and rotary nuances like you mentioned seemed to be the most common from my experience.

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Vericut has been rock solid for me except for the idiot on the other side of the screen.

once in a great while I will blow by an error detected by vericut.

it is also only as good as the information you setup in it.

unfortunately I dont think it is a replacement for a cautious setup person at the machine. tool length offsets, work coordinates tool geometry loaded are variables that can cause big problems that vericut cannot detect.

 

If I was doing work that had hours of cycle at each rotation I would put M0 at rots. sneak the tool into 1st cut and if alls well I would have no hesitation to walk away if vericut looked good.

 

excellent tool to have

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Yeah, the Vericut does give me some peace of mind but I do still find myself proving out the more complicated programs just how I have in the past. For simple 3-axis programs I have hit start and leave for the night, but only after checking the tools and setup three times...

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I've had vericut miss a crazy IJK Vs. R arc problem i had on a Mori horz.

 

post was setup IJK. joggle in pocket wall which was 1/4 cutter diameter caused machine to swing in the wrong derection. cutter blew through the part.

changed post to R = no problem.

 

never repeated that error since

 

edit: BTW, both methods showed fine in vericut

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The only time I crashed was the one time I made a minor change and didn't rerun Vericut :)

 

But that was after a year or so of proving out the Vericut Post.

 

Just keep in mind if your fixture is out 0.005 on the machine as to how it is set in the Vericut file the simulation will not be 100%

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Crash... no. Knock on wood. :)

 

I have had some issues resulting in unexpected results.

 

An old Mori in circle interpolation like mkd said.

 

Working with multiple people using and modifying the files is one. It used to be a lot more problematic in older versions because of the file structure, now we have them locked down well.

 

If your collision between components is not set properly you can crash. A subplate was added to one of our machines but the collision between tool and that component not set. Looked a fool putting a nice scar in the subplate. This could have been very bad.

 

The most prevalent issue I have experienced is running autodiff on large parts and not going through the results with a fine toothed comb. The gouge 'shadows' in radii look remarkably similar to an actual gouge on very large parts. Not for the weary or hurried eye. That has bitten me a couple times. :thumbdown:

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I worked at a place that had a guy that all he did was run machine simulation with Vericut. They had spent a lot of time and money to get everything right and used this instead of tape proving on the machine. We ran almost exclusively high speed Makinos. He would get the program after you had finished and ran Vericut yourself. In this instance, that worked great.

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Sorry to hi-jack your thread for a minute, but I have never used Vericut. I verify a lot and my PC can sometimes slow down when getting into a pretty complex program. It's not so bad now since we put the Quadro 2000 card in the box. But it does still lag on the really crazy stuff. Does Vericut run faster? Is it more accurate? What is the plus side?

 

Edit: I just watched their video. Very cool.

 

Thanks

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Work PC sucks eh? How bad?

 

It does run faster but you better have some RAM for complex, big stuff.

 

They say 2 GB is preferred... seems a bit low to me if you are running CAM and Vericut side by side. :oldforum headscratch:

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We implemented Vericut around last September/October. Since then, we have built up a machine model for our Okuma MB56VA (with a 4th Axis). We recently used it to verify a very complex full simultaneous 4 axis part, and it is something I wouldn't have had the confidence to rely on a Mastercam Verification for.

 

The part ran beautifully on Vericut, and ran beautifully on the the machine. We had to do some initial tests to get the 4th axis motion correct, but now after some real world tests, we have a lot of confidence to run more 4 axis programming. And we are close to purchasing a 5 axis machine, so it is going to get even more interesting :)

 

For anybody doing complex 3 axis or more programming, I believe Vericut is a great tool. And the reporting and analysis tools are great as well. Vericut support and training (from their US corporate office) is fantastic as well.

 

I also recently saw Siemens NX's IS&V, which is kind of like Machsim, but it verifys the posted code. I have to say, it was pretty impressive. I've heard it is pretty tricky to get up and running, but once configured, it works well. I was certainly impressed by it.

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