Jump to content

Welcome to eMastercam

Register now to participate in the forums, access the download area, buy Mastercam training materials, post processors and more. This message will be removed once you have signed in.

Use your display name or email address to sign in:

Toolpath for machining a fillet without a form tool?


average_jonny
 Share

Recommended Posts

So I come from a Powermill background but my current place uses Mastecam which I've been self learning over the past five weeks. One thing I can't seem to get working and no one at my place has any new ideas, is machining a fillet without a form tool, or a tool smaller than the fillet itself. In Powermill there was a toolpath called 'Optimised constant Z' , which is equivalent to Mastercams waterline, however OCZ would maintain an equal stepover even as the geometry angle changes. The closest toolpath I've found is flowline however it breaks the toolpath at some corners as seen in the attached capture, I've also attached the file so you can see for yourselves. 

Any ideas on the best way to go about this?

 

 

1.JPG

Test_piece2.mcam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Waterline with "extra passes in shallow areas" enabled would work just fine too. If you are just learning Mastercam, just try to stick with the high-speed toolpaths. Once you learn them well, they will cover most every job you do. The old legacy toolpaths work in many cases too, but why waste your time learning old techniques.

Carmen

Link to comment
Share on other sites
7 minutes ago, Redfire427 said:

Waterline with "extra passes in shallow areas" enabled would work just fine too. If you are just learning Mastercam, just try to stick with the high-speed toolpaths. Once you learn them well, they will cover most every job you do. The old legacy toolpaths work in many cases too, but why waste your time learning old techniques.

Carmen

Sorry sir but I disagree. Surface Finish Contour and Flowline are still superior in many instances to the newer HST Toolpaths IMHO.

Surface Finish Contour is what I think you looking for to cut this that tool and get

image.png

 

 

 

 

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
30 minutes ago, Elmer Fudd said:

And my reseller told me that I was the only one that uses 2D sweep. :whistle: Gives good clean code without a lot of retracts and easy to program.

Probably younger guy, doesn't know how to program without surfaces.  I started on MC 4, MSDOS based.  Had to fire it up from the command line.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

My Turn! I read many years ago about using a "tool boundary" perpendicular to the cutting direction with Surface Finish Contour.  It helps maintain a constant stepover relative to the  chain, a bit like Scallop or Flowline.  Take a look at the attached file and look at the containment boundary I used.

Test_piece2_RT.mcam

  • Thanks 2
  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites
13 hours ago, Rich Thomas 4D Engineering said:

My Turn! I read many years ago about using a "tool boundary" perpendicular to the cutting direction with Surface Finish Contour.  It helps maintain a constant stepover relative to the  chain, a bit like Scallop or Flowline.  Take a look at the attached file and look at the containment boundary I used.

Test_piece2_RT.mcam

Wow thanks for the tip! I learned a lot in this thread... I usually would do a flowline for something like this, but struggle keeping the tool down sometimes..

Thats my one gripe with mastercam, I have used other softwares that are just much easier to produce a clean path. But I don't believe them to have quite as much "flexibility" that mastercam does. 

I just need to learn more of the ins and out with mastercam. I just get too complacent with what I know and how i can make things work, but I know there is much better ways out there..

Link to comment
Share on other sites
On 11/29/2019 at 3:56 PM, Rich Thomas 4D Engineering said:

My Turn! I read many years ago about using a "tool boundary" perpendicular to the cutting direction with Surface Finish Contour.  It helps maintain a constant stepover relative to the  chain, a bit like Scallop or Flowline.  Take a look at the attached file and look at the containment boundary I used.

Test_piece2_RT.mcam

Big thanks Rich, this looks very tidy and to be seems to be the less convoluted way.

On 11/30/2019 at 10:05 PM, jlw™ said:

I've never seen this.  Having said that, if you completely remove the containment you get basically the same path.  I don't see what this containment is doing.  I'm going to have to play with this one more.

Without the containment boundary the stepover towards to the bottom of the fillet becomes exponentially larger, with the boundary it has the reverse effect. Attached two captures of with and without to show this.

1.JPG

2.JPG

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
On 11/29/2019 at 10:56 AM, Rich Thomas 4D Engineering said:

My Turn! I read many years ago about using a "tool boundary" perpendicular to the cutting direction with Surface Finish Contour.  It helps maintain a constant stepover relative to the  chain, a bit like Scallop or Flowline.  Take a look at the attached file and look at the containment boundary I used.

Test_piece2_RT.mcam

Would you possibly be able to create a version of this file that can be opened in MC2018 or lower?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

Join us!

eMastercam - your online source for all things Mastercam.

Together, we are the strongest Mastercam community on the web with over 56,000 members, and our online store offers a wide selection of training materials for all applications and skill levels.

Follow us

×
×
  • Create New...