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MotorCityMinion

eMC Learning Group
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Everything posted by MotorCityMinion

  1. LOL, my thoughts exactly, isolating the tabs is the first thing I've done. Knocking off the outside corners, then hitting them with a different tool path may help as well. I'm also trying to omit the splines from the tool path. Time consuming. There are quite a few options / things to try that require time. Without a Solid to verify against, it could all be for nothing. Did you see what I meant about the compression taking place and screwing up the tool path? The slope of the surfaces look shallow enough to enable 2d in the blend path. Lack of export options or C-hooks in the HLE make this a challenge.
  2. Keep in mind that the blend chains control how the tool paths morphs from one side to the other. Excessive compression can take place with 3D enabled and the tool path starts to get funky. On occasion, I'll brake the initial blend area into two tool paths, using different shaped blend curves with each path. If you want, have Kevin upload that file and I'll take a look.
  3. From the looks of that picture, you have the PIcasso shade setting cranked.
  4. I feel like I'm on Candid Camera. Before I asked about it, I tried it with and without the quotation marks, in the tool path comments section. Nothing changed. Post Mods...
  5. "ARC FACTOR .5" Hmmm, where does this go?
  6. These tools are perishable, limited life span. Planet is correct, smaller tools wear out faster. Keep everything clean before assembly. Any little bit of grime can build up quickly and get baked into the bore. Cherry red shortens the lifespan. The induction systems apply the proper amount of heat to a specific diameter range, increasing the life of the holder. Don't overhang the tooling. Repeated sticking tools to far out of the holder produces a shelf in the holder, which stops you from using the full shank under normal conditions. Use H6 class fit tooling and avoid the cheap e-mills. They usually don't run true anyways. With any of the below conditions, plan on ordering new holders. We have honed holders to buy more time or clean them up. We've also Jig ground them up to the next size, 6mm to 1/4". Don't expect to many tool changes in this situation. Cherry red. Ok, so that's a no no with new holders but we have used that setting to get a stubborn holder to expand. Typically we up the diameter setting to the next size range. Eventually they will not expand far enough to get the tool in. You can even tap (or EDM ) a hole for a set screw and size the bore to make standard extensions out of the used holders after they stop expanding.
  7. That picture I use was a goof. Inspiration: One day my kid came home with a bad hair cut just like that. I cant remember but I think he says that in the movie. I need to change that picture. I've gone about 220. IPM with a low quality 3/8 emill x .70dp. in Aluminum no problem on the 98 VF4. Biggest issue was getting the chips out of the way. IMO, that first picture that JP posted represents the smoothest motion and is how I would approach it. Larger tool dia. perhaps but the technique was spot on.
  8. You should be fine on that machine. I've done quite a bit of this type work on a 98" vf4 with only 15 hp. Who knows though, your machine may have been beat to death already but these tool paths excel on terrible machines. Make sure your getting arcs in your tool path, use the arc filter for smoother motion if need be. "next video i give you a shout out too. hope your not mad bro...but we just met ya know?" LOL, no need, it's all good. Keep up the good work. Pretty soon you'll be looking at everything and saying to yourself "Where can I use Dynamic milling?" on every job. I edited my last reply omit the stupid comments. "Total depth was 1.125 and i dont think we have anything in .500" dia that would cut that deep one pass...but maybe..." I've gone that route on the older Haas with long e-mills and the tool life sucked. I had to go down as low as 8% step over at full depth to keep things manageable. Going around corners on that first pass can wreak havoc as radial engagement can get heavy in these areas. Snapped a few tools in my time as well. I have about 6 different speed and feed calculators and they all churn out something different. I've also studied the competition's know how with regards to adaptive clearing and there's a ton of good info to be had.
  9. Bump up the back feed rate. Late models Haas = 400. ipm, Older machine = 300. ipm. It looks like the part is already squared. Make the machine region chain exactly the same as the part boundary and you'll cut on that first pass. As for the ZIGZAG cutting motion, that can be detrimental to tool life, especially in tool steels. Two axial Z passes? Bump up the radial step over to 12%, climb cut only, you'll make up the lost ZIGZAG time and increase tool life. Start in the top left as this will increase the length of cut and actual engagement time, reduce the cycle time and reduce the tool path size as well as reduce the additional wear incurred by repeatedly entering the raw material. Chips should look straw colored to purple.
  10. "Are the holes and and flange mating faces finished prior to this op? Yes they are, I milled them looking down the axis of the big hole. I used a tilting table and pins to index to the right angles." The reason I ask is that another option would be to make a simple fixture with short pins that locates the flange face and the three existing holes for the a axis. Using small clamps, like a top insert clamp from a lathe tool to hold the three areas that do not require machining. Now you can 2d contour the back side of the flange. If you have design flexibility, back spot face in the same op that you machined the flange. BTW, thats a cool part.
  11. You don't necessarily need an entry point. On the cut parameters page, there is a approach distance setting and a tab with with a drop down menu that allows you select a zone in which to approach the part. This works in combination with the Machining and Avoidance chains to determine how to enter the cut. You need to change up your train of thought here. This may sound goofy but don't think of it as a part. Normally in a 2D contour we select the actual part geometry we want to cut. With dynamic, the perspective changes how we look at the part and the avoidance region becomes our actual machining geometry, with the machining region only representing the raw stock to cut away. The first chain, the machining region in red, represents the stock we need to remove, not necessarily the part, and is the target cut area. This can be any shape to accommodate the raw material at hand or our stock removal requirements, and usually contains some, if not all of the part geometry. It does not have to match your part geometry either. With core milling, the cutter can and will go around the outside of this chain and is only limited by the avoidance region. See picture. The second chain, the avoidance region in light blue, not only represents the part but the area we want to stay out of. Think of it as an electric fence we can't touch by .02, stock to leave. Notice in JP's example how the avoidance region goes beyond the machining region. Only three elements of that region actually represent part geometry. This tells Mastercam to stay out of this yard and will be used to control the cutter path. This chain shape can be almost anything willy nilly as long as some of the geometry represents where not to cut, which normally contains some if not all finished part geometry. We could have actually used the rest of the actual part geometry to define the avoidance region. Mastercam looks at both chains and knows that there is nothing to the left of the avoidance region that requires cutting and stays out of that neighborhood. OK, so I go grab a fresh cup o joe, come back and find my beagle standing on my desk finishing off my doughnut and she has one paw on the mouse. (Yah, I've got too much time on my hands). Now look at my chain geometry. I hit regen and woah, I have a very similar tool path. Look at the picture below. JP's on the left, mine on the right. Take notice of how the avoidance chain influenced the entry and produced an arc leading in. Very cool. The point is, these chaining options are very flexible and limitless. Almost anything will work once you get your head in the right place. I hope all this gibberish helps somebody out, MCM.
  12. Are the holes and and flange mating faces finished prior to this op?
  13. "I hope everyone learns and enjoys what we do here." The tip on using the Quick Drill and Tap tables. Very good. Thanks Jay.
  14. Thanks Aaron. Converting the Fixture to surfaces worked. Instead of the Stock model, I needed to save a STL at the same point in the program to use as stock. That worked as well. Resolution was pretty coarse but we're making progress.
  15. Kev, perhaps just your file doesn't work in the HLE. I cant get it to fly as well. There could be some differences between the HLE machine sim and the X6MU2 machine sim that AxelZu used, that we are unaware of. The Jazz Bass works in the HLE. I selected Transform into WCS and was able to get the all ops to work consecutively on a 3 axis mill. The fixture would not show up though. I just locked it up again going to full screen. I think it's just buggy period.
  16. I just tried the Jazz Bass again. The show or hide workpiece button is grayed out no matter what I tried. 1st op top + top wcs ran fine. Then tried 3rd op bottom with Bottom wcs. Locked up. Restart MC. In machinesim I selected Transform into WCS and was able to get the 3rd op to work. The show or hide workpiece button is grayed out. I could not get the fixture components to show up as well. I was able to get all 4 ops to run in the same set up. With no lock up.
  17. Just tried your file. Monkeyed with a few settings. The show or hide workpiece button is grayed out no matter what I tried. All Fixture components on their own level. Part on it's own level.
  18. Shot in the dark. The desktop icon that launches the HLE, right click on it, select properties, select the compatibility tab. Disable Visual Themes and Disable desktop composition. There are a ton of setting in the Nvidia contolr panel you can tweak as well. My crappy 9800gt handles things OK with no tweaks so I know that Quadro should do much better.
  19. It worked the first time I used it with the Jazz Bass program in the HLE. I had to move the fixture and part above the table to see it. Position / Translation XYZ in the first pic you posted is how I moved it. I just tried it again but had the wrong WCS active for the group I was using, got an error message and a white out. Now it's locked up. I'll mess with it again later.
  20. No math-o-majics needed. 1) Create arc end points, using the circle centers as end points. 2) Create arc 3 points, using the circle centers as points. 3) Create an arc tangent to 3 entities and add the hole rad to that arc value.
  21. Saving the flow line as geometry shows how the path compensates for the tangency of the ball end mill. This is about as close to tangent as your going to get. Using this as a drive curve for the blend tool path eliminates wasted moves, over lapping, or not cutting enough. I had to use surfaces as the solid produced hops and waves in the blend tool path. Exlax.
  22. "Yes the Verisurf tools include a PDF tool, works great." +2 !!! The 3D pdf option is so cool. You get to zoom, pan, rotate, measure, change the lighting and a bunch of other features as well.
  23. I just grabbed that and took a look. What model # Kurt was that?
  24. Some surfacing tomfoolery. Create dummy drive surfaces, extending the ear by your tool rad. (Green in the picture using a .25 ball). This will assist in keeping the tool down and can be used in a 3D roughing strategy where the tool enters the cut in a sane fashion, cutting with the side of the tool at full depth. Run a flowline path in the corners. While in back plot, save that as geometry to a new level. Change the color on the set of curves produced at the outer most cut to a new color but not the lead-in or lead-out. (Flowline saved picture). That will be used as your second drive curve in a SF Blend tool path. Create the first Blend curve using the true outermost radius of the ear and remember to extend it (.125 min.) far enough to allow the tool to get to the bottom of the part. Now create a SF Blend tool path before the flow line path. Use depth limits (deepest radius point plus half the ball) on the flow line path as we don't need to machine the entire vertical area of the ear near the bottom. Apply direction control to both tool paths accordingly. HTH, MCM.
  25. 3/16 all day long. My best reasons for using these: Run out then rigidity. I have not used anything smaller. I've seen too many guys over torque the ER's and either spring the collet or ruin the nut. I resorted to stashing the new collets just to keep run out sane.

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