FBM

[White Feather]

My boss wanted me to find out if it is actually feasible for us to use the FBM feature on simpler small vise sized 3 axis milling parts... I've never used it for anything at all as most of the stuff I work on is larger 5 axis work so I have no idea of its capabilities/limitations, but I'm rather skeptical about it.

 

We don't do any production work, 90% of our work is aerospace and generally only 1-4 parts so we aren't really worried about making things run as aggressively as you would a production job, but some of the parts are a little complex for their size and require some 3d work occasionally... I'd provide and example but most of the parts are ITAR.

 

Opinions?

 

Any help appreciated.

[Manofwar]

I work in the same sector. I don't think I would consider FBM for anything we do. The tolerances we deal with tend to push me away from FBM. Also, the setup is super finicky. You have to get everything perfect before it will function, and even after that you're going to be editing what it puts out quite a bit. From what I've seen of it, it still has a ways to go before being a fully functional part of Mastercam. I would hold off on it. However, me just saying things on this forum doesn't make them correct, I'd encourage you to try it out for a little bit, see if you can make it work. If not you will have all the reasons for yourself and be able to show your boss the problems. If it works you gain a powerful tool to do the simple programming for you. And hopefully share some of that knowledge here. 

[White Feather]

That's kind of my train of thought on it as well, but since I have absolutely no experience with it I figured it best to at least ask.

 

Even if we did decide to try and use it I would never be doing it myself, I strictly program our bigger more complex stuff... we have a few other programmers who do everything else in another building... all of our small stuff is in one building and the big stuff is in mine.

[Newbeeee™]

Do a youtube search for mastercam fbm.

There's a couple of vids by memory on setting it up and what it can do.

For the right job, the theory is very good IMO...

[bogusmill]

I used FBM once for 5 axis drilling and tapping 110 holes each on a different vector so for center drilling, tap drilling, and tapping that's 330 different selections of the same size holes. You have to fill in all the values asked for in the tools and other sections before I could make it work. But once the blanks were all filled in with feeds and speeds and tool depths and vectors of the right length etc, it worked very well. It cut and tapped all the holes correctly in about 8 minutes from regen to NC code and I was using X7 I think. No way to do it that fast any other way. There was a left and right side parts too. I've never tried milling with it but it worked for that particular job.