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Dynamic open contour


mig
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On 5/12/2020 at 7:34 PM, AGreen5 said:

I used dynamic milling today a couple times, I tried making chains by abbreviating a silhouette boundary to clear material to different stock depths.  It didn't like that.  It kept telling me the avoidance geometry was an open chain.  I ended up making chains one for each depth operation from scratch even after extending and trimming and even replacing some of the lines endpoint to endpoint it was still saying they were open chains.    I was trying to train a guy and it was typical Mastercam was making itself look as difficult as it is.  I think he was pretty discouraged.  

I learned a simple method for handling this. Take the boundary and offset .002" in both directions and then make a end for that shape. Now use that as your air region. Need to extend part the shape you want to cut like an imaginary boundary, but it needs to be a closed pocket of sorts.

Mastercam U has free classes for people learning Mastercam because of Covid-19. I have gone through several of them as a refresher and they are good for people learning Mastercam.

Here is a sample file and some screen shots. 2 Shapes I made up to cut out of a imagery piece of stock.

Level 1 is the shape I want to cut.

Level 2 is the Boundary in one case just offset .002 in each direction the other is offset .002 away from the shape I want to cut.

Level 50 is the Raw Stock.

Screen Shot #1

Screen Shot #2

Please review and let's teach you so you can teach others.

That is first group 2D dynamic.

The 2nd Group is the same work with 3D HST to get 2D HST toolpaths.

Level 100 is the Flat Boundary Surface to drive the same 2D shape transformed down -2.0 where I want to cut the shape.

Level 101 is the Boundary in which to cut the shape and have the tool start outside the shape.

5th Axis File for teaching

 

Edited by crazy^millman
Screen shots removed to allow for more space to add future help
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I don't know if this will help or make things worse...but here's a sample with several iterations of how to set up a dynamic contour to machine a full area and finish or how to remachine and area with a smaller tool and finish..

Be sure to note the Contour Wall settings. They really determine much of how the path will behave.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lqjjj4gj0bkpa4v/DYNAMIC CONTOUR SAMPLE.mcam?dl=0

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57 minutes ago, David Colin said:

Hi all,

I just checked Ron's examples and i didn't know that trick with light offsets... but i didn't see obvious difference with classic chaining. In which case do you need to use it?

image.png.0e848365699426bbbf82169ca585767c.png

Dave use both methods with the region past and the region right up next to it and see how the toolpath cuts. I have tried open shapes and got error with trying to define regions, but making the slight offset I learned from someone else the air regions don't give me the same fit which is why I shared it.

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Dave I had never used the edge like that to define the air region and that is much faster and easier than my example. I have updated the file and that has now been added as another option to Dynamically cut the part. Thank you for getting involved and this is how we help each other with examples.

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I'm not 100% sure they were drawn in the same C-plane.  So you might have got me there. The boundary op unfortunately goes to a selected Z height and I guess maybe I should have made a plane from geometry on the boundary sketch to ensure mastercam could handle it.  

 

I wish there were planes to be selected like Solidworks, but I get how Mastercam has no plug in to bring Solidworks into mastercam.  The alternative bringing mastercam to soldiworks makes all the functionality different so the guy no longer knows how to run mastercam in solidworks, so it's a training issue in either direction, involving my incompatibility rather than a nice solution that makes life easier.  

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On 5/13/2020 at 10:11 AM, crazy^millman said:

Dave use both methods with the region past and the region right up next to it and see how the toolpath cuts. I have tried open shapes and got error with trying to define regions, but making the slight offset I learned from someone else the air regions don't give me the same fit which is why I shared it.

I've found a slight weakness of the classic chaining approach to be areas that have two radii melting away from the machining region on a diameter.  It doesn't seem to like air classic chains like you posted which were mostly what I liked to do for those in those cases.  I only used the classic chains because I kind of suck at drawing in mastercam CAD.  

 

Thanks to the above poster for the video link, I'll check that out.  I did watch some streaming teacher videos Sunday and saw them using some of the icon buttons on the solid chaining menu in conjunction with 3D checked to grab whole surfaces as avoidance regions.  They were making it look fairly user friendly to machine without geometry creation.  I never realized the icons had that utility.  Maybe I didn't have 3D checked or something. 

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Yeah, Ron's method was the only thing you could do with a shape like this when we introduced of air regions, you could only have one open air region.  Other than that, you had to have a closed method, so the closest thing you could get to multiple open air regions was to just offset a single line a little bit to make it technically not a closed region.   I believe that was new for 2020, but it could have been 2019... Those old releases all blur together :)

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