Cut my first impeller today

[Chipmakr]

This is my first successful attempt at machining an impeller. I tried one a few years ago that had a splitter vane and a wicked twist, but couldn't get thru it without violating the vanes. I am a much better programmer now & the programming tools have gotten better & easier to use. Plus we have a machine that is made for full five axis high speed machining now. This one needs some improvements to the surface finish and improved blends, but I am happy to get one finished and I know improvement will come.

 

 

[TK-32™]

Good job! Looks great

[Bob W.]

Nice work!

[BenK]

Looks good.

[Rstewart]

Good Job

 

I'd love to have the capability to do something like that!

[AlbertZini]

How long does this impeller manufactured ?

[Jayson Kramer]

Nice job and thank you for sharing.

[Chipmakr]

It took about 3 hours to cut.

[crazy^millman]

Dwain excellent work.

 

TK it is nice to cut open impellers.

[Thee Rickster ™]

Very nice!

[JAMMAN]

LOL @ "violating the vanes" I know that feeling for sure. Looks great, did you use Blade Expert or just wing it?

[#Rekd™]

Nice part!!

 

How long to program it?

[Aaron Eberhard]

Looks like a fun (and educational!) way to spend a day at the shop!

[rickcact1]

Great job!! How did you run the machine with the door open? Our HSM400U has 2 door locks.

[TK-32™]

Dwain excellent work.

 

TK it is nice to cut open impellers.

 

Yes sir. The ones you are making are gonna require some serious skills

[Zoffen]

SUHWEET!

 

Great Work!

 

Can we get get a pimp your impeller gallery where people can post the sweet impellers or turbomachinery parts. Nothing to me shows the capabilities of modern machine tools more than sweet impellers!

 

Can't wait to get after some turbomachinery. Looks like time to build that RC turbine engine lol!

[kirko]

Nice job! Looks like a very aggressive blade. What size inducer/exducer?

[metalmansteve]

Sweet....this is what I strive for some day. Could this be done on a haas trunion? I think I read on here they can't handle true 5x motion?

[crazy^millman]

Steve, yes a HAAS can cut that part. If you look on the Mastercam Blog was just a posting about cutting Impellers and they were using a HAAS Trunnion to do it.

 

HTH

[JAMMAN]

If I can do them on a Fadal VMC15 with a calmotion TRT160, anything would be better. Just takes longer. It takes me about 7 hours to make a similar wheel, I made the one in my avatar.

[Chipmakr]

LOL @ "violating the vanes" I know that feeling for sure. Looks great, did you use Blade Expert or just wing it?

No blade expert. I did buy the "MastercamX7_Multiaxis_ProCourseware" PDF and worked my way thru the impeller related tutorials. I started off using the canned tool box tool paths and would get generally happy and then make a copy of that operation and switch to the advanced interface and adjust my margins etc...

 

How long to program it?

It probably took me about 30 hours total to program it. I started with several models from grabcad and tried to find one that was doable but no not easy. Then I scaled it down to fit into my blank. I started with one model and then switched to another. On one model I could get the floor motion I wanted and one I could get the vane motion I wanted. The one I cut has the better vane motion, but I still haven't gotten happy with the floor on it. Some of my floor roughing is still 3+2. If I had the right code I think the parts could run a good bit quicker on this machine.

 

How did you run the machine with the door open? Our HSM400U has 2 door locks.

Ours just has one lock and we made some extra "dummy keys" for set up purposes. We took most of the video's with the door closed. We have our GoPro camera mounted in there with a suction cup mount.

 

Nice job! Looks like a very aggressive blade. What size inducer/exducer?

I have no idea what size it is. My blank was 3"OD so I scaled it down to about 2.95Ø.

[5th Axis]

The piece looks great. What kind of work holding were you using?

[GIZMO 21]

Just curious,are you 5th axis inc. out of san diego?

[JAMMAN]

Floors are actually the hardest part, I finally got handy with them after about the 5th different design. Several little tricks, so many I had to take screenshots and put together a reference on paper.

 

Making it (the floor) smooth don't necessarily increase performance or efficiency on the turbo. I use .05 stepovers, takes a lot less time identical results.

 

No blade expert here either.

[Guest]

Blade expert cuts programming time WAY down on those things. WAY, WAY down.