Cutting at angle

[Gregore]

Is madcam capable of setting a angle that the ball nose cutter will always stay at during a 5 axis cut?

I will be soon cutting some very hard materials with diamond ball nose cutters and have concerns of the center of the cutter doing very little work thus wearing out long before the sides .

If I could have the cutter always stay at 10 to 12 degrees I would never be using the very center

Thanks

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[Dan B]

Are you referring to a positional 5-axis toolpath (3+2 axis)? Or a simultaneous 5-axis path where the cutter stays on a preset non-perpendicular angle?

Dan

[Gregore]

yes simultaneous 5 axis with the cutter held at a pre determined non perpendicular path to the cutting surface. I do have the full license "5extra" , at the moment we only have the 4 axis set up but we are running experiments with harmonic drives for the 4th and 5th and should be able to be up and running in a few months. so now i am playing with madam to get used to new types of strategies .

with a diamond ball nose held perpendicular to the surface and a step down and stepover of .02mm then not a whole lot of chip load ( not sure term of cut load for diamond plated cutters) will be taking place as the very center of the cutter is not really turning even at 60,000 rpm my max speed. now if the cutter can be leaned over 10 or so degrees then we have a whole lot of surface cutting going on .

hope I am making some sense.

thanks Dan

[Kiwi]

I have never used simultaneous 5 axis and don't know MadCam capabilities.
It MAY be possible to modify the perpendicular code using a VB macro.
This would need investigating if unable to get MadCam to do what you want.

[Gregore]

I am hoping Joakim will chime in and tell me how easy it is as I would have no idea how to write a macro .

[Kiwi]

Can you post one line of code with the tool perpendicular and also the code for the tool set at an angle for the same point of contact on the part?
Also about 10 lines of code.

[Gregore]

posting a line of code with the cutter at 90 to the surface is easy enough but posting with it at 80 or 110 is not possible as that is the part I do not know how to do in mad cam . also is it easy enough to write a macro for a million lines of code ? or does the number not matter?

[Kiwi]

Can you touch off cutter at different angles and note XYZ as per drawing.

The number of lines of code is not the problem. Just sorting out the conversion.

[svenakela]

What you want to do is 4-axis indexed cutting. It's pretty simple to do with a standard 3D 3-axis toolpath.

Rotate you model to the angle you want to cut.
Prepare the tool path as usual.
Select both model and tool path and rotate it back.
Post process, and the machine will tilt when running.


Movie clip here:
MADCAMCNC: 3D toolpaths for 4-axis indexing

[Kiwi]

Another way to do with constant tool angle to part.
Generate path as 3D 3 axis as normal.
When machining, rotate part required tool angle and set controller to machine on this angle (Fanuc G68) but keep tool vertical (normal Z)

[Gregore]

svenakela , thanks for responding


I have done exactly that for designs that did not have too much complication , I will have to do the roughing this way if madam is unable to do it in simultaneous 5 axis

the new designs I am working on will only be able to be cut with 5 axis as I will be cutting inserts ( intarsia ) of gem stones into other gem stones on a some what spherical surface.

[Gregore]

I assume that some 5 axis programs can handle this

i would also assume that if some controllers can handle inverse time feed rate on the fly without the use of G93 then they can also probably handle the tool at an angle on the fly?

[Dan B]

Hi Gregore,

Yes, this is something that is easily done in other programs. In WorkNC it's a simple setting that will allow you to tip the cutter in relation to the normal vector of the surfaces.



The result is shown below:





I'm I understanding you correctly, that this is what you would like to do in madCAM? Or have I missed the point?

Thanks,

Dan

[svenakela]

svenakela , thanks for responding


I have done exactly that for designs that did not have too much complication , I will have to do the roughing this way if madam is unable to do it in simultaneous 5 axis

the new designs I am working on will only be able to be cut with 5 axis as I will be cutting inserts ( intarsia ) of gem stones into other gem stones on a some what spherical surface.

You can't do that with a Drive Surface?

[Dan B]

It might be possible with a drive surface on simplistic models like I made. However, it's not a reliable solution that would work in a lot of cases. I've discussed this with Joakim and he feels this is something he can add as an option in a future release.

Dan

[Gregore]

My idea was to use a drive surface also but then on more complicated stuff you would have to resort to 5 axis simultaneous and then would be back to using the very center of the cutter . Lower end diamond cutters last about a minute or 2 like this

[Dan B]

FYI... The ability to tip the tool in two directions will be in the next release.

Dan

[Gregore]

Way cool , thanks Dan for getting this done , and thank Yoakim for me too .

This will save me a bunch of money on cutters

[Kiwi]

posting a line of code with the cutter at 90 to the surface is easy enough but posting with it at 80 or 110 is not possible as that is the part I do not know how to do in mad cam . also is it easy enough to write a macro for a million lines of code ? or does the number not matter?

Could you please post the 5 axis code with the cutter at 90 deg for one pass along the ridge of the attached model. Wanting to establish the different XYZ points when the angles change. Thanks.

[Dan B]

Hi Gregore,

It's all Joakim, I'm just the messenger. I do have a pre-release of the next service release and I can tell you that it works just as we discussed above. There are some other great features too. You're going to want this release when it's available.