Lofted wall surface

[TheePres]

What 5 axis toolpath should I be using to cut a lofted wall with alot of twist that has control of cut pattern? Parallel seems to do ok, but I'd rather follow curvature the way flowline does or even better would be a spiral out pattern. 

Currently using a ball endmill and 3d scallop but need to switch to 5 axis to control angle of contact. 

[pullo]

one pic is more than 7000 words....

Gracjan

[crazy^millman]

Morph between 2 Curves throwing darts at the dart board facing the opposite direction in the dark blindfolded.

[john316]

You can use a Multi-Axis curve as long as your loft doesn't have too much convex or concave shape in the vertical direction to throw you out of tolerance.

From the side project a line onto your loft surface to create an "along" chain.

From the top create lines perpendicular to the loft and project them onto the loft to create the vertical lines. Simplify them into lines or arcs. Only lines can be used for the tool direction so if there are any arcs you'll need to create a line from the top to the bottom. This is where you can check the vertical curvature to see if this method will work.

 

[JoshC]

On 3/16/2018 at 11:03 AM, C^Millman said:

Morph between 2 Curves throwing darts at the dart board facing the opposite direction in the dark blindfolded.

+1 - Morph it

[TheePres]

Thanks for the suggestions and I apologize for being so broad on the question. 

I'll upload something this evening. 

[TheePres]

Here is a typical surface that I need to deal with.

I would like to keep like a 45 deg. contact angle with a ball endmill, but also need to limit  the angle at left end of surface.

LOFT-WALL.mcam

[crazy^millman]

Here is what I would do with that single surface. I was going the surface normal to come up with what side you wanted cut, but just made them all the same normal to what you see in the file back. A little more than just a surface would help.

Dropbox link

[TheePres]

Ron,

Never knew you could extend the curves as you have. That is brilliant!!! 

Have you ever gotten "tool axis limits"  to work succesfully? if you have, would you please share an example of this.

Even sharing that 1 surface made me a bit nervous!!! Secret projects going on here.

 

 

[crazy^millman]

2 hours ago, TheePres said:

Ron,

Never knew you could extend the curves as you have. That is brilliant!!! 

Have you ever gotten "tool axis limits"  to work succesfully? if you have, would you please share an example of this.

Even sharing that 1 surface made me a bit nervous!!! Secret projects going on here.

 

 

The curves are the suggestion for the toolpath to use for making the motions you want. I have cut a triangle by using the bottom leg of the triangle as one line then transform the same line to above the triangle and now the tool cuts like I want. Morph Between 2 curves and Parallel have some of the same abilities just really need to think outside the box.

Yes I have used limits and no I have nothing I can share. I like to draw a normal line to my surface and use the limits from that line most of the time I use limits. A lot of power in these toolpaths to make a machine dance however you want.

[huskermcdoogle]

2 hours ago, TheePres said:

Have you ever gotten "tool axis limits"  to work succesfully? if you have, would you please share an example of this.

Limits work great, never really had an issue with them.  If you are going around something, almost always you will end up using conical limits as you are likely only trying to limit one rotary.  Then sometimes you have to add another limit in there to limit the other rotary.  Think cartesian part WCS coordinates and you should be able to get it to work.  Keep in mind that it is from the cartesian axis, not from the machine axis angle.  So say you have an ISO layout Head Head router.  XYZBC  Where the spindle in vertical orientation is the B zero, if you wanted to limit the B to 0 , you would limit 90 to 90 degrees in the XZ plane and the YZ.

Anyway, you just have to play with it.  Look at the little diagrams that popup when you go to enter angles, they are describing it exactly as seen in your WCS coordinates.