Need Help!- Turning Spline profile

[CNCinCal]

Hi All,

I was hoping I could get some help with this problem. I'm generating code for turning a parabolic profile in X3. The segments that are generated are straight lines and are too far apart to leave a good feature (faceted). I can't seem to find a setting in the program to reduce the length of the segments or fit arcs to the spline. Either method would solve my problem. Anybody "been there, done that"? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Roger

[Superman]

Is it a spline that you have selected ? or
is it a series of lines ?

You can "Simplify" ( under the "Edit" pull down ) to fit arc/s at a certian max. tolerance from that spline. ( you can break the spline into smaller pieces before simplifying to get more arcs )
you can also "fit" an arc, trying to replace the spline, if possible

NC code from a spline is usually output as a series of lines, giving the facetted appearance.
You also get lines outputted if the arc is not "normal" to the tool plane
these lines can be blended better by tightening up the "Filter" tolerance in the toolpath operation

[CNCinCal]

Originally Posted by Superman Is it a spline that you have selected ? or is it a series of lines ? You can "Simplify" ( under the "Edit" pull down ) to fit arc/s at a certian max. tolerance from that spline. ( you can break the spline into smaller pieces before simplifying to get more arcs ) you can also "fit" an arc, trying to replace the spline, if possible NC code from a spline is usually output as a series of lines, giving the facetted appearance. You also get lines outputted if the arc is not "normal" to the tool plane these lines can be blended better by tightening up the "Filter" tolerance in the toolpath operation

Thanks for replying Superman. I tried it and no luck. In a rush, I just derived the parabolic function in excel and built a table. Would still like to find a solution though.

Roger

[Mike Mattera]

Where and how was the spline created? If you created it with lines, you'll have lines. I saw Excel spreadsheet, which leads me to think it's a bunck of point's (line segments) and not the physical "Spline" geometry. If you imported this from a Cad source, analyze it and see what you have. If it's line segments, you can recreate a spline from the endpoints of the lines.

If you can save the points in an ascii text file (.txt) as...
0.100,0.100,0.00
0.200,0.200,0.00
0.300,0.300,0.00

X,Y,Z points, You can use File Merge (or file open) and select the Ascii File type. Then tell it to bring it in as a spline.

Mike Mattera

[CNCinCal]

Originally Posted by Mike Mattera Where and how was the spline created? If you created it with lines, you'll have lines. I saw Excel spreadsheet, which leads me to think it's a bunck of point's (line segments) and not the physical "Spline" geometry. If you imported this from a Cad source, analyze it and see what you have. If it's line segments, you can recreate a spline from the endpoints of the lines. If you can save the points in an ascii text file (.txt) as... 0.100,0.100,0.00 0.200,0.200,0.00 0.300,0.300,0.00 X,Y,Z points, You can use File Merge (or file open) and select the Ascii File type. Then tell it to bring it in as a spline. Mike Mattera

Thanks for replying Mike. A poster on another forum suggested I change the linearization (sp?) tolerance from .02 to .0001 and it worked like a champ.

The profile is a spline that was provided by my customer via a DXF file. What I ended up doing was plotting out the points in my cad system and placing them in excel. From there I derived the function (2nd order polynomial with R² = 1.0) and generated the points for my toolpath.

At least I have the solution for the next time I need it though.

Best Regards,

Roger