Simple way to create REF points?

[gcode]

ICAM has some amazing products, but in my experience, they are very expensive and ICAM is difficult to work with

I bought a post from them years ago.. and it could do amazing things.. but their developers are Catia guys

They  did not know or understand Mastercam which made the whole process painful and time consuming.

We did not buy the whole package, but the post was still  kinematically  aware of the machine's  capabilities

and produced very nice code.

[huskermcdoogle]

Aaron,

What about having the ability to add tool axis controls to the approach and retract points in the moduleworks paths?  This would help for those applications greatly.  Maybe this would be a good reason to segway into fixing the approach and retract points that sometimes just don't work as expected in the normal paths.  If you have a multiaxis license it would give you the abliity to select a plane, line or similar tool axis controls we are currently familiar with.

[huskermcdoogle]

Or another idea on this line.  What about an approach/retract contour selection ability within any toolpath?

[crazy^millman]

I quit working with certain companies some time ago and I don't mention them I don't work with them. Not that have bad products, but I choose to go in a different direction when they did also. You can read into that whatever you want. I am not saying anymore than I already said.

[Zoffen]

5 hours ago, huskermcdoogle said:

Aaron,

What about having the ability to add tool axis controls to the approach and retract points in the moduleworks paths?  This would help for those applications greatly.  Maybe this would be a good reason to segway into fixing the approach and retract points that sometimes just don't work as expected in the normal paths.  If you have a multiaxis license it would give you the abliity to select a plane, line or similar tool axis controls we are currently familiar with.

 

One option that is really handy is this setting:

It will keep the initial orientation until close and the then orient to the correct vector (tool vector for lead-in) at this location. It worked pretty good as i could approach the part (I think it would use the "clearance plane" for the initial orientation which often times was TOP or A0. C0. on the machine. Then rotate to the correct vector closer to the part. I was using TCP for all the full 5-axis work and this really helped in situations where i was doing work deep in a hole as i could approach the hole normail to the hole axis and then "pose" to the right vector with the tool inside the hole already . This did take some post work to get the right output so everything went smoothly on the machine.

Ironically i have a video of this exact process and where it was really nice to use it on my youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YK9mPCI0QQ

 

Hope this helps!

[Codeworx]

Not sure if this is more work or less, but you can use Convert to 5x tool path and set links to "New Links" then you can use 5axis linking between paths. I've done this a few times as I find I could never rely 100% on reference points.

You do end up with double the toolpaths, but just another tool in the bag that might help.

 

Ray

multiaxis_link_3+2.mcam

[BenK]

9 hours ago, Aaron Eberhard - CNC Software said:

I agree with this statement

 

BenK - Not to be flippant, but "I don't really care for the way multiaxis link does it," isn't exactly a helpful statement.  I can't go to the developers and just say "change things."  Well, I guess you I could, but you probably wouldn't like that, either. 

I know it's a lot of work on your part, and I do appreciate all of the feedback you give us, but if you make a statement like "what we need is individual control between every toolpath," my immediate questions are going to be "why," "when," and "can you send in a sample part that describes the motion you don't like and why?"  As you mentioned, there is a way to get individual multiaxis control between every toolpath, so we have to figure out why that amount of effort is preferable to the automated way.

Sorry, I didn't feel it was necessary to go into further detail seeing as others on here have already touched on many of the things I don't like about it. Plus the fact that right before that statement I said exactly what I was after. Not to mention I really didn't have time to give a long drawn out post due to the fact that I'm extremely busy with the project I'm working on. 

Yes, you can use Curve 5 axis but it's more time consuming than it should be to link toolpaths with this method. Just imagine if we could add controls between toolpaths and customize the order of the axis movement and the distance they travel. That would make controlling everything easy wouldn't it? If that's not worth the development time I don't know what is. 

Now I would be more than happy to have a meaningful conversation about this when I have more time. But this isn't the place.

[SlaveCam]

Safety zone sounds like a great idea, I never even noticed it was there. In 4-axis/rotary A work I had to modify the post so that before every index movement, it would move Z to a specified machine coordinate. No more playing with op clearance planes. It works by adding a line similar to ROTARY_CLEARANCE_Z=150 to machine group comment.