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MrFish

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Posts posted by MrFish

  1. Running a repeat Ti6AL4V job at the moment in our measly HAAS UMC500. Using KMetal UDDE hognose cutters. Can't do the depth of cut you require due to machine tool rigidity but we get good tool life in 3d Opti milling at 2xD depth, 7% step over, 90m/min surface and 0.15mm per tooth feed.

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  2. Not sure its completely related but we had an error similar and I eventually found an unwanted "fixture" stl saved in the MachSim folder. For some reason sometimes the software would use that fixture to work out its stock position off the table, other times it would use the one from the mastercam setup. Anyway once deleted it stopped the random placement. Might be worth checking. MachSim folder is in Public Documents, MC folder

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  3. On 11/4/2023 at 7:33 AM, Kyle F said:

    Wouldn't it be easier on the machine than running a 4 flute though? I mill 718 inconel on a wimpy ol' haas and going from 4flute to 8flute endmills was a game changer 😂

    Generally not as you have more flutes engaged at any one time so more load on the machine. Big rigid machines can handle this but not so much on the lighter duty ones.

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  4. 2 hours ago, Matthew Hajicek - Singularity said:

    A few months ago I had to make 100 parts with six 000-120 threads in each, Ti6Al4V-ELI.  I started out threadmilling, but it was taking several minutes per part, and I had to keep gauging, adjusting the offset, and rerunning to keep the threads in tolerance.  Each threadmill was only good for about two dozen parts.  Same job came up again, and this time I got form taps; one and done for each hole, about a second per hole.  The one tap lasted the whole job, and every hole was perfect.

    If you have a very small number of parts to do, threadmilling is probably easier and safer, especially on large threads.  Form tapping is WAY faster, provided you have the right material-specific tap and enough torque.  #10 threads are the upper limit for form tapping in Ti on my little baby 20 taper CM-1's.

    Well there you go then, my learning for the day. I would have never have even attempted to form tap Titanium with my understanding of the material properties and difficulties it can produce. Out of interest what tap were you using ?

    4 hours ago, cruzila said:

    I forget where I saw it (Boeing? aerospace? IMCO?) but there were tests to see if the number of flutes could be maximized for roughing TI. It came down to runout and the limits of the physical universe. To get each tooth to engage well and give long life 13 is about the max for an endmill. Material removal rates boils down to number of teeth.

     

    CHIP THINNING.jpg

    From my experience this is very much machine and setup specific. You'll need both a rigid machine and setup for that.Try running a 13 tooth endmill in Ti6al4V on a HAAS !!!

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    • Haha 1
  5. 9 minutes ago, jpatry said:

    Is it because the material is quite springy and does not like to deform permanently in such an operation, or is it due to how titanium likes to adhere to other materials under such conditions?

    This explains it well 

    Titanium is also a challenge. “In addition to its high tensile strength and low ductility, titanium has very low thermal conductivity, meaning that it doesn’t absorb heat very well,” Gennuso said. During a tapping operation, heat enters the workpiece, tap and chips, he explained. Because forming doesn’t create chips, the heat must go into the tap or the material. When form tapping titanium, a lot of that heat penetrates the tool and causes premature failure.

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  6. Been a while since I did complex mold work, but I used to try limit my file size to 250meg by saving multiple files, rough, semi finish, finish etc. Was a PIA to manage but helped the performance immensely. In-process stock models were great for rest machining but also bloated files quickly. my two cents !!

  7. 31 minutes ago, Chally72 said:

    I don't have Aaron's file, but I'd guess that the "jankiness" is the tilt being applied to the tool/holder to avoid the walls as the tool pivots through the corner. Remember that when you're looking at the blue lines, you're looking at the tip position of the tool, and NOT the actual contact point of the tool flute to the surface. The Collision control method may be modifying the tilt, which will pivot the tool about the center of the ball, not about the tip, and it'll swing the blue lines up and over and make them appear uneven.

    If you plotted out the actual contact point (or had a way to view it, which you do in Simulator in 2024 and will in Advanced Toolpath Display in 2025), you'd see perfectly crisp stepovers still. And the examples farther up the thread were in some cases looking at the pattern before collision control was applied, meaning the blue tip still represents the true stepover at this stage.

    If you've ever calculated a toolpath using an accelerated finishing tool, this disparity between where the blue lines fall and what the tool is actually doing is even greater, since the tool effective radius centerpoint does not fall along the tool centerline, and small changes in tool flute contact can create major disparities in pass to pass tip position visuals. The "gut check" we get by looking at the blue lines for uniformity becomes less and less valuable as a measure of the quality of the path.

    Thanks Dylan, love learning the intricacies of these tool paths, gives me a far better understanding of what/why I am seeing something in my tool path. I'm a bit old school and like to check the look of the "toolpath" for an idea of potential finish (vs verify), especially in 3d surfacing operations.  Advanced Toolpath Display in 2025 sounds like it will have some nice additions for this.

    • Like 1
  8. 5 hours ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

    Ah, sorry, I missed that the side extension was essential.

    It's definitely not as easy as the surface-based toolpaths to do it with the geodesic engine, and you don't have a Top/Bottom extension, you can only do a blanket extension.  It's not too hard, but you need a bit of background knowledge to really leverage it.  Skip the next paragraph if you don't care about the mechanics of it :)

    One important note is that I'd recommend using this with a single Guide chain (Parallel equivalent), as having two that it's trying to Morph between can get a little weird sometimes. 

    Geodesic engines are based on the mesh (they create a mesh in the background from your selected surfaces at whatever tolerance you specify).  The edges of the mesh are considered a constraint that it has to stay within, using whatever pattern you wanted it to fit.  So, you have two problems to solve:

    * One is that your mesh (the fillet) doesn't extend at all

    * Two is that your containment is based on the original mesh.  

    To solve the first problem, use Cut parameters > Machining Geometry Advanced Params > Extend Mesh: image.png.ceb382ac467bc231cb7ff93e858eab0c.png

    You can preview the toolpath, but nothing will change at this point (other than taking longer to generate!):

    image.png.639b85f70d7fc7a7111a64cc76597ec5.png

    But, in the background, the mesh has been extended on all sides.

    So, to solve Problem Two, can be solved using Cut Pattern > Containment, and allowing the tool to go outside the containment:

    image.png.a2fd542c6781f881421c3db153aace54.png

     

    Other than that, I think you'd probably have to create the geometry you want to.  

    Hi Aaron

    While your doing an excellent job of educating us on the intricacies of how the processing engines actually handle these tool paths , can you explain why the tool path in your picture above now looks a bit janky in the corner compared to the un-extended one ?

  9. Maybe check your default locations for operation files etc, seen similar behavior in the past on systems that don't run the default locations. And for this reason and ease of transitioning between releases I have set up our current system to use default locations on all computers with a backup software like Karen's Replicator handling the job of keeping the files backed up and at there latest state.

  10. 12 hours ago, crazy^millman said:

    Edge would be one of the 3. You can add them to your RMB to make accessing them easier. They don't have a lock ability like others do.

    image.png.8a6a7dce62385a185faa3b22d34b2e50.png

    Thanks, not quite what I am looking for, want to be able to create a line tangent to a circle but use edge snap to make it tangent to that edge, if that makes sense !

    scrub that , just realized that if you use the ctrl key to turn off the snap it will highlight the edge snap and once you let go of the ctrl key it stays somewhat active.

    • Like 1
  11. On 8/12/2023 at 9:29 AM, kunfuzed said:

    Just jumped from 2021 to 2024.  Selecting stock for Verify in the Simulator Options is a little different.  I got my Stock Model selected and verified correctly, but now I can't turn off it being displayed on the screen.  Normally a stock model I can "turn on or off" by hitting "Alt-T". 

    image.png

    use this wavy line icon to toggle the stock model display along with the Alt-T to show/hide tool paths. But there is a bug with the config file , display, toolpaths box not staying ticked, this is logged.

     

    Capture.PNG

    Capture1.PNG

  12. 9 hours ago, sharles said:

    Don't worry...in 2024 they switched some things that had always worked one way and now it works the other: like pre-selection no longer works for Transform--Project like it's been forever...So, I end up double selecting it...though I'm trying to train myself not to do it...🙄

    Don't worry by the time you've trained yourself to the "new" way they will fix it and you'll have to re-train yourself back 😉

     

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  13. Blaser, no, or minimal nasty additives in it. It does require more maintenance, ie. keeping an eye on mix ratios, PH etc but it completely cured a lot of my customers skin issues when I was selling it. Now own my own shop and have also chosen to run it for operator health.

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  14. Heads up if your on Windows 10 and have noticed a massive slow down in Mastercam loading simulation and posting its probably the Microsoft .net frame work updates that are happening every few days at the moment. You have to uninstall that update (and block it) and run a repair on mastercam.

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  15. On 7/22/2023 at 2:12 AM, Tony Davis said:

    I am trying to face a large aluminum plate on a UMC 750. The plate is 25.5" in diameter so I cant just face it normally because I don't have enough travel in X.

    I am trying to travel in X to move across the plate while rotating the C Axis. I have done it before, but for the life of me I cant find the program and cant remember how I did it.

    Help please

    Easiest way to do this is draw a spiral on the face, use a contour tool path driven from that spiral and turn on axis substitution. 

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