Get an old school Arbor style milling machine. Setup the blades to cut them all on one pass. Might take 1 hour a part, but you could cut them all in one pass to depth and not worry about deflection. That was the last new machine one company I worked for got. 1965 Machine is mint condition was going to put all the CNC Machines to shame. Hate to say it, but for a part like this it very well could.

I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why this wasn't the first and only suggestion.

Ok, here is the file. The red square is of course my stock. The light blue is the finished part. And the green is where I need to cut it to. I have figured all of this out just playing with the settings. So anywhere that I could improve PLEASE point me in the right direction. But at the preset time I cannot get the facing toolpath to cut the face the way I want it to. I have tried every setting and nothing seems to work. So please tell me what I am doing wrong.

 

Thanks guys.

I feel your pain. I was in the same boat a couple months ago. My only CNC lathe experience was hearing one run on the other side of the shop. Once I figured a few things out, I found MC lathe to be extremely easy. Can you post a screen shot? MY boss S%$^ canned maintenance so we don't have x8

check it out.

Oh, so that part's your problem now eh?

What they said.  I just cut a ton of this, 1/2 5fl, .800 depth, 12% radial, 4800 rpm and 120 ipm.  I started drilling start holes at the entry points and my too life went way up. The helical entry seems to be a bit hard on the corners.

almost all of our contracts stipulate that no parts may come in contact with bismuth. If it weren't for that, it looks like something feasible.

We do a lot of 356 castings and they eat up face mill inserts. I would like to find a better alternative.

We inherited a bunch of jobs that were originally programmed for a 4th horizontal and converted to 4th vertical, and G68 was how they did it. Just thought i'd throw that out as an easy solution.

you could also use G68 to rotate it 90 deg.

I just bought a 3 pack of scamdisks at Costco, threw them all in the trash. Nothing but errors.

Wouldn't it be easier to just use an editor to move all the Z's down 1-1/2"?

The old MCedit worked good for that, but I'm pretty sure Cimco does it

He didn't specifically say a 1 in em, I did. So, buying a used surface grinder, setting it up, Learning to dress the wheel, and then grind a set of jaws is better than buying a $290 em? Let's buy something with its own unique safety concerns and maintenance requirements because an em is pricey. as I recall, he had a milling question and your advice was to buy a wore out grinder. No wonder you can't find $50 endmills. Your not looking.

Actually, if you had bothered to read the OP, he wanted to try milling them because he doesn't have a grinder. So, for $600, the problem goes away, plus he gets a grinder.

Oh, and I was lying. I did buy a 1" 6fl carbide em for $50, but it was out of the trunk of some guys car, and I didn't have to go looking, he came to me.

I must be buying my tools at the wrong place. Where can you get a 1" 6 fl carbide em for $50?

At several recent auctions I've seen decent 6x12 manual surface grinders go for , give or take, $600

a 1in 6fl em always works on accident for me...

run it like 13-8 stainless.

 

But seriously, a 1in 5 or 6 flute email with 0.030cr running 0.005ipt and 140sf should handle it.

 

Like I said, it always accidently works for me.

Seriously?  He could go out and buy a used surface grinder for less than a 1" carbide end mill would cost.

What is the material? 'm assuming it';s not inconel

Thanks!

I plan to rotate the plug for each part. I have about a .002" clearance from the plug to the part.

If you rotate the plug, the next hole will be passing through the center of the previous hole at an angle. Could be a problem.  We've done this a couple ways. 1.You could drill the 1/4 through the first wall, then switch to a 1/4 dia  long center drill and spot the hole on the other side of the bore. 2. Drill the 1/4 hole first. 3. Install a removable detail in the fixture with a 1/4 drill bushing in it.

So, do you know where I can find angle information?  It obviously comes from some where...

You can calculate the angle from the matrix data. It''s not real straight forward.

The only way I've found to do it is to display the matrix data for that work plane.

you could stick the value in an unused work offset, like G54P10, ie #7181 = #141

Try using a drill made for drilling plastic

Are you trying to end mill them? You'll have a whole lot better luck laying them down and side milling them

People aren't the problem, it's the A-holes, and there's a handful of them in every crowd

6 people, and five days of inspection for 250 dims... insane.

But, how many trips to Jersey Mikes did that include?

A screen shot would help, but I think I know what you're referring to. When you turn the part over, it will cut air where it thinks there is material, but there really isn't. The only way I've gotten it to work is to split the toolpath in 2. Generate the first path at a depth that will remove the outer boundry of the stock. Then create a new stock model from that, and do a new opti rest using that stock model.

Volumill does the same thing.  BTW, I recently did a side by side comparison of Opti rough and Volumill. Opti won by a factor of about 2:1. Volumill released a new version last month that sped things up by about 50%, but opti still wins by a huge margin.

it simulates fine in mc but just spins the opposite direction in the machine.

isn't there a direction that is pos and neg on the rotary itself?

no matter where I mount the rotary ,if I am looking directly at the face of the chuck from the front,which direction is positive? cloclwise or counterclockwise?

If you're looking at the face of the chuck, POS would be Clockwise. From your earlier description, you're going backward. I would suggest getting it straightened out, as down the road it's an accident waiting to happen.  I once worked at a place where we had several Richmill (talk about garbage) rotaries, and they were all wired differently. What a nightmare, and for no good reason.

First, determine whether the machine parameters are backward, or if the rotary has been wired backward.

With the setup you described, ie rotary on the right, moving A positive should rotate the work toward you.. (CCW if looking through the rotary from the back) Sounds like a parameter change