Surfacing with Mastercam

[Smackre]

Ok so I want to surface a Profile and a chamfer into a peice of solid 1.25" plastic round stock. I am going to mill a elipse into the solid 1.25" to start with. That part I know how to do. I am then going to want to mill a curved profile into the end of the stock and add a chamfer going from the curved profile to the elipse I profiled into it. I have all of this designed. But I can not figure out how to mill the chamfer. Doing the curved profile is easy. I can use mastercam surface to do it.

But some reason mastercam surface does not want to do the chamfer right. It either does 1/2 of it right and then some reason the other half turns into concave chamfer instead of a convex chamfer. Here is the file of what I am attempting to do. It is in DWG format and Ziped up. If anyone can please help me it would be great.

I also attacted a pic to what I am talking about. See how the chamfer just kinda changes from convex to concave.

[edmunds]

Hello Smackre!
I am not sure if I get it right, but by my mind it has to deal with tool approach direction. Every surface has it own direction from which You can machine it by default. That direction should be possible to change. In Alpha Cam the function is called "Reverse tool side". There should be something similar in MasterCam.
B.R.

[Jer7440]

It seems that you are having trouble cutting the radius on the angle? What version of Mastercam are you using? I loaded your part into version 9 and this is how I would cut your part.



Edit: After looking at your part closer...I realize that what I thought was a straight angle....isn't. Let me take another look. Ok here ya go....this is a MC V9 file that I threw some toolpaths at. You will probably need to tighten up stepovers and change to cutters that are appropriate for you. Check it out.

HELP.zip

[Smackre]

I am unsure what you changed Jer. but with the file you posted all my surfaces work. I deleted your toolpaths and tried to make my own and they worked. But if I use my autocad file and try and do those same toolpaths they dont work. Confused !

[Jer7440]

Not sure what to tell you....all I did was open your dwg in MC. MC imported it as a solid. Oh well...glad it works for you now.

[a1cadcam]

sometimes what happens especially with imported drawings.. the 'normal' of the surface/face gets flipped around.. this affects the side of the face which MC calculates the toolpath from...

just a guess here, but seems like what might have happened

[Smackre]

I just dont understand it. Your file works great. I wrote the gcode and made the part. But now I have more parts to make and they all do the same thing. I need to get this issue resolved.

[joecnc1234]

use analyze/surfaces/set norms make sure all the arrows are pointing up. It tells mc what side of the surface you want to machine. (in layman's terms).
Joe
edit pick the surfaces and it will show you an arrow make sure the arrow is point toward the z plus direction (up)

[cadcam]

As for the normals this effect mostly surface creation like filleting and surface Flowline. Most of the basic surface paths like Parriall you will not have mastercam have an issue with surface normals.
In the older days like V6 this was a big problem.

I will look at your file later as it is off to the office time.

[rkey]

So what i found with your file is that when i just simply imported it it failed to import the surfaces where you are having your problems and it isn't visible until you turn on shading in the surfaces menu and how i fixed this is i checked the box in the import menu that says "attempt to heal solids on import

hope this helps

I'm using MC 9

If this isn't it or non of the other suggestions are it try turning off and background programs that are running as sometimes these can cause problems especially anti virus programs and firewalls as it seems that maybe it is something on your computer that is causing the problem because I had no problems other than the ones noted with your files

good luck

[Steve Arteman]

Smackre,
Look at the video I did at the link below, I think this is what you are looking for.
http://www.cad2cam.net/blend/blend.html
Steve
WWW.cad2cam.net