Are you using the quick groove toolpath or the standard?

.015 is definitely a light cut, but not using any coolant will tend to cause problems. When cutting alum there should always be plenty of coolant. 2 flute cutter would be best. The SFM should be a lot higher for alum.

quote: i am used to setting my feeds and speeds by feel as i'm machining. Use that experience to help determine DOC. For a good rule of thumb DOC is dependent upon your application, Feed & Speed are dependent upon your material. Of course they cross over, but you get the idea. DOC is mostly determined by chip evacuation (and Machine HP). Obviously there is better chip evacutaion if you are cutting on the side of the part, so you are able to take a deeper depth of cut. If you are slotting, the chnces of recutting chips are greater so you take a lighter DOC. quote: I'm kinda slow sometimes so let me make sure i got this straight. if we use the example i gave i should be able to cut .25 deep with .5 in. 4 flute cutter at 2300rpm and 27 ipm. It depends, are you using a carbide cutter and what type of material are you cutting? The DOC is a good start.

Same here. Must've been an oversight.

Great machine Jim! The only reason we went with the Puma over the Lynx was for the swing and distance between centers.

quote: With something like this am I correct to want a small radius tool so not to push on the material? You are correct, although a larger radius will stay sharper longer. We use the style of fly cutter that uses a brazed carbide turning tool. We also use a style that has a single insert. Check out J&L or MSC.

A fly cutter would work wll in this situation.

quote: One other thing, I do very little over 1 1/2" dia in alum and not much over 1" dia in stainless. most tol, are .0002 Some machines will hold this for the first year (.0002 Tol) or so. What I would be concerned with is holding this tolerance on a machine that is a few years old. The older Hardinges would've done it, can't say if the new ones will. Our oldest Daewoo is 15 months old and we hold .0005 all day long. Not too sure how long that will last though.

We compared a Daewoo Puma 240 with a Hardinge. We ended up buying the Puma. It's been a great machine so far. We also have a Puma 300 LB. We got an 8" chuck, a 5C Attachement and a 16 C attachement, as well as the tool probe and parts catcher. We spent a little more than $74 K I believe. I didn't like the turret on the hardinge. If I remember right, it was set up only to take VDI tooling. I could be wrong.

Matt, We put an ad in the Tribune which also posts it on Career Builder for a CNC machinist. We got about 30 applications in. I narrowed it down to about 6-7 candidates. Made the phone calls, and only two called back! I felt the same way you do. Not sure if you guys are members of the TMA, but sometimes people go through them looking for jobs also.

Unfortunately there is no Stock recognition witht the milling toolpaths. If you really need to cut them down you can trim the toolpaths.

Make sure you are climb cutting to pull the chips out of the cut. Otherwise you are pushing the chips right into the cut. Recutting chips is always a bad thing. We always take full depth cuts with slitting saw. Never had a problem. Your feeds and speeds seem fine, just check the direction.

Dragracer, Post it on the ftp or email me and I will take a look. I have had problems with the cutoff, but not on standard grooving. Tim

Are you sure it's not refreshing your screen properly. I get the boxes when I XForm a solid (to show the boundary box of the solid) and then they go away after the XForm is complete.

We have made a similar fixture for round parts, but it should work for square parts with a little modification. On the fixture plate, we created our own clamps that would spread out in both directions to clamp the parts. The clamps are located in between the parts. As you would tighten the screw the clamps would spread out (and down for the round parts). Being that the parts are square, just spreading out would work fine (like mini vises). On the ends of the plates have pins for the parts to push against. I can see it in my head perfectly, describing it is a whole other mess! Edit: I guess what I just described are Mitee Bites, but more expensive!

Make a base plate to fit on the machine, and two fixtures to hold the parts. Load up one fixture, attach it to the base plate, then let it run. While that one is running someone can load and unload the second fixture. The only downtime is the length of time to change out fixtures. If you use locating pins and De Staco clamps, you're talking only a couple of minutes.

Bala, I have a Lathe with an 0T control on it. That program would not work on my lathe because of the G54. The older lathes used a G50 to define the workpiece zero position. It would be very beneficial if you were able to compare your program with one that was previously run on that machine.

Don, I have 2 Daewoo Lathes and lowboy is correct. Took me a while to find that button!

After you enter the value push either the diameter or radius button a second time so that the field has a red background. This will keep the value the same for all circles entered. It works in parallel lines and other features as well.

Seeing that you are a couple of hours from everything, you may also want to try one of these: www.streamingteacher.com www.tipsformanufacturing.com HTH

Tim, We just did something similar. .750" Diameter x .120 thick in Bronze. Needed a 32 finish. We ended up using a High Speed cutter, but we got a staggered tooth to help clear the chips. Surface finish was awesome! HTH

What about getting a copy of the logo in .bmp or .jpeg and using the raster to vector conversion?

Thanks for all the suggestions! The best "looking" path I came up with was to create a swept surface of the finished radius and use the flowline toolpath. The only problem with it is that it didn't machine the radius on 2 of the 4 sides of the pocket. The two sides that it didn't machine have toolpaths, but in verify it is not cutting anything.

Thanks Hardmill - I tried it and it projects the toolpath, but when I verify it, it doesn't cut the radius. Is flowline the path that I would use if I had Level 3 to get the same type of path? If you have time that would be awesome. If anyone knows how to stretch the limits of Level 2, I'll still be checking this thread. Thanks