Uggh, borked it up. Had to order a thin wall Keensert

Yes, Helicoil, not Keen-Sert My coil went to low out of spec and I mangled it with one of those cone shaped extractor tools. It's a 1/4 - 20. Now if I mill it out to the tap hole of Ø.266, maybe it will break apart or I can pick it out. I calculated the remains to be .014 thick per side. This seems still rather thick to use a dental pick on. Suggestions? These are tanged, not tangless. EDIT: I mangled it because we don't have the right size extraction tool.

60- 90 mins into a set-up. Stops are aligned and stock is in place, tools loaded and you're ready to do a final lockdown on the stock to the table...oh forgot to slide a t-nut in. One end of the slot is blocked by the tool setter, other end is blocked by a precisely aligned fixture piece. Luckily I have a stash of the 1/4 turn t-nuts, but still.

What Matthew said. Just watch your clamping pressures and cut it.

We've needed RAH work on occasion so I was just trying to think of more justification for the 1k system, which isn't going to happen. Bean counters rule this place. This giant defense contractor isn't going out of business soon, but they always go on and on and on about competing with the outside and keeping our labor rate down blah blah. Meanwhile, they order a lot of Fadal spindles, electronics and monitors to keep machines alive. I'm grateful I'm on a new VF2.

Oh, will 300psi drive the small angled heads?

No top and 1000psi? Damn.

Does that machine have a top on it?

Can't help you, I only have 24 tools Yikes

Great guys, that's what I wanted to hear. 1k exceeds the budget a bit. We specd thru spindle air blast as well. Sometimes we drill 6" deep .75 holes in AL. I hope the 300psi will be up to it.

Well, our MX-520 dreams have been curbed so now we're looking at a VF2SS with a TR-160 trunnion. We want thru spindle coolant, but is 300psi suited more for endmills and bigger drills? How small of a drill will it be effective on?

Friend of Psychomill?

Force toolchange works, thanks mkd. Yea, feedrates should be modal, but I have no idea whats happening. There's a G00 approach, then no feed on the helical moves.

Well, I'm back at this again. All planes are created and A-axis output looks good. NOW, when I post my code for c'boring, holes 4 -9 (10 holes) don't post with a feedrate for the helix rough and I get an alarm. This happens when posting OPs for holes 1-10. If I post 4-10, the feedrate returns to hole 4, but not the remaining. All this work and now another roadblock. UGGH Any ideas why it would do this?

Well, Engineering had to do a redesign on that model to make the holes straight. Back at it tomorrow

Can you plunge mill it out?

How did you eliminate the Y rotation in the hole axis lines? Did you have to manually analyze each hole angle? Oh wait, I see you said Dynamic, so if I set my Hole 2 plane to the COR, I can then use right-click Dynamic Rotate to match the angle of the hole vector? Then just keep copying the plane and rotating and re-picking points to drill?

I just went over this with engineering which originally told us it was a radius, when if fact it is a conic, so yea. He's kind of worried now and wants to go check how he created the model. In the meantime, to "fix" this and eliminate the Y rotation, can I draw a fixed axis line with only 1 angle of tilt at the 0° hole, create a plane, then rotate that plane accordingly for the rest of the holes so I only rotate around X? Just ANOTHER justification for a 5-axis I tell you! Thanks for all the eyes on this guys. I'd be stuck up to my neck if it wasn't for this forum. I'll keep this thread updated.

UGGH! Okay, now I see it. One of them is .02°! SInce I used the Verisurf Hole Axis, it followed what the model is yes? I have to get engineering down here.

Shoot, sorry about the confusion. I didn't delete enough of the junk. I'm only using the "HOLES" in the plane manager/ "Angled Holes" was created with a custom WCS. I scrapped all that and moved the entire thing to "TOP" SInce that file, all my "HOLE" planes are now on COR. I updated the sample file to be exactly what I have now.

Okay so all my Planes are now set at COR, I can see the toolpaths going in at angles, but I'm still getting the error about machine achievable X axis. The holes are only going in one direction.

DJ : Thanks man, much appreciated. I'll check out all the stuff you mentioned. CJ : Yes, my WCS is on center of rotation. When I created planes I did "by Normal" and used the hole axis lines. ****SAMPLE FILE IN ORIGINAL POST****

Rstewart. Thanks, I'm looking at a file you helped me with before with angled holes. It was 4 holes and each plane is at the center of rotation, but as I click on each plane in the Plane manager, I can see the Gnomon changing angles. I used, Plane by Normal and clicked the Axis line, but the Gnomon stayed at the axis line. How do I get the Gnomon to the COR?

My brain is killing me. I'll see you guys in the morning. Thanks for all the help.