Project onto solid

[Little Skippy]

Hey all,

My first post. I've never actually had formal training in Gibbs but I can feel may way around the basics from years of day to day interactions here at work.

I'm trying to project a shift pattern on to a dome like solid so that I can use a 60 degree d-bit to engrave my vehicles shift pattern onto a round threaded knob I've turned.

When I go to cut the engraving after projecting it seems the Z start points are all different and some of the characters aren't being engraved. How can I get them to all cut consistently and what am I missing?

Thanks in advance!

Skippy

[Little Skippy]

I'm going to try extrude cutting the characters away from the solid in Solidworks and see if I can edge select where the characters meet the top of the dome and have Gibbs use that geometry to contour the patterns in 3D.

Any ideas if this will work, or will I have the same problem?

[cadman]

With the 60 deg cutter its better to project the geometry onto the solid and drive along that rather than project the toolpath. Projected toolpaths work better with cutters that have radius; balls, spherical, etc..

[Little Skippy]

So how did you project the geometry on there? I was using the project contour plug in.

edit: specifically project contour, not toolpath

[cadman]

Plug-ins menu --> Solids --> Project Onto Solids --> from here choices are points, line, contour, settings.

Select the geometry and body, face, or faces you want to project onto. To drive the tool the curve needs to be connected and the projected curve may be disconnected. In the VNC file I projected the geometry as individual features and connected them after they were projected.

[Little Skippy]

Cadman,

If you get some free time to mess around, would you mind projecting the letters R 1 3 5 onto a dome and see if you can get them to work. It won't allow me to connect that geometry...

Thanks for all your help so far!

[cadman]

No problem. Probably won't get to it tonight, but I'll upload a file for you.

[Little Skippy]

No problem. Probably won't get to it tonight, but I'll upload a file for you.

Wouldn't expect you to

I've been trying this for months here and there, and alas, no luck!

[cadman]

Here you go. I normally check the spacing between all of the text, but didn't do it here. Personally, I like the engraving with a small ball endmill better. V grooves can look a little funny in some places when you go over the steep sides of round surface. Radius grooves are more uniform.

[cadman]

V7.0