Basic pocketing question

[MachineManiac]

Hi

I made a simple testpart, which has a pocket (D), two isolated islands (B,C) with different depths, and one "island" (A) which is attached to an edge of the pocket (i dont know am i describing it well..) and that is also in a different depth as can be seen on picture 1.

What i cant do is to cut away material from A the way it should. What is the difference between island A to islands B and C when creating toolpaths for mill ?

When i try to chain island A to my pocket D it does make a toolpath but with a very silly results, what am i doing wrong?

Picture 3 shows my toolpath. and the simulated result can be seen on picture 2.

Sw is Mastercam X

thank you.

[Matt Berube]

Hi Maniac,

Are you using surface toolpaths or 2-d toolpaths ?

edit:

Actually after taking a second look...

It seems that you are using the 2-d toolpaths. Surface pocketing would be easier in my opinion if you have the Mill3 license.

Anyway, what you are trying to do is also easily done with 2-d...

I would use the island pocket routine like you apparently already did but I would remove the chain that is causing the problems in area "A".

Then I would use a simple contour with depth cuts and multi-passes to cut the top of area "A".

[9 1/2]

Hi Manic,
Like Matt above suggested. You should do a partial chaining option when doing the outside chain of the pocket going around Island "A" then a subsiquent pocket opp to remove the material on the top of island "A". You'll have to add reference geometery on the one side of the island [the attached side] equilling the radius of your cutter, then turn cutter comp off so the cut path will go directly over the geometery. This will eliminate the bits left at the corners and mill up to the attached side of island "a"

Just my thoughts, others with a far deeper understanding of MC will chime in with corrections to my suggestions.

regards.

[MachineManiac]

Hi again

Thanks for your quick reply. After hours of swetting in a front of my pc i managed to do it, (in here its 2 am at the moment..)

i think im using surface toolpaths and solids instead of 2d and i have mill level 3..

I desided to solve my task by adding first a loop that covers the whole pocket(picture 4) and i cut it to the wanted depth, then i added the same loop with one chain(picture 5) and cut it, then adding a pocket with 2 chains (picture 6) and cut it and finally the same pocket with another chain(picture 7) and cut. Each height of those pockets are done with a different section of tooling. Now the part is as it should be, but the way i did that is odd.. is it normal to use that many different layers of tooling or am i just doing it the hard way?

My next moment of wondering is the finishing. Because i did that with so many layers of different chains and pockets, i wonder, what would be the best way to do the finishing, the outer boundary and the bottom?. If we think of doing this the way i did, with many layers and i need to finish surfaces 'A', 'B' and 'C' but not the whole pocket area of that height. So how should i do that? if i simply enable "finish" on finishing parameters, it will finish the whole area and not just surface 'A', if you know what i mean. So is it possible to enable "finishing" and do it afterwords only to that area 'A' ? It would save a lot of machining time.


-Maniac

[9 1/2]

Have you looked at the "remachine" option?

[kiemkhach]

2D just work fine

Just xform Translate the island B,and C down with different depth,and make a pocket toolpath
Next we facing down the 2 island attach to wall later with different operation but use same tool

Tada
I have no time to config out how to do 1 operation at all

[MachineManiac]

This is quite frustrating. I tried remachine-option because it sounds to be what i need on finishing but it does not have any affect whatsoever. It does not leave material to be removed later.

Something else which is annoying is that i didnt select "finishing" from finishing parameters, only roughing, but what it does is that the tool passes to finishing after roughing and its not even enabled, and what is interesting is that the depth is zero ! so it finishes without removing material, really strange behaviour. This would add machining time and this kind of "finishing" is useless work.

Then i tried to create a toolpath with only finishing enabled. I put finish passes to 3 with 0.1 spacing, total depth was -7 and depth cuts were max 5. Simulation shows that the finishing was ok, but the total depth was 3.5 !! so half what it should...

On some point i noticed that when creating roughing passes with depth cuts, occasionally it does not care of that at all, it goes straight to the bottom...

Well the software is full of bugs and strange behaviour and it certainly does not do what i would have expected, it makes wrong paths, incorrect depths, useless finishing, and what else do i need..
I dont see point of using this SW as it is now, it makes crappy results and things which are really silly and useless. Is all of this because this is an old version of MasterCam X ?

I really hope that the newer versions are working more properly.

[Mastercam User]

Newer versions still have problems. We have Mastercam X2 (not X2 MR1 or X2 MR2) and as I found out solid chaining does not allow you to use Chain At Point in X2. It was told by cadcam that this was fixed in X2 MR1. Right now I am having problems with solid verify and understanding how to make solid verify work with several different kinds of parts in one file. You would think that something like this would be easy and straight forward but it is not easy or straight forward at all. Like you I think that Mastercam needs to be better.

[Matt Berube]

Machine Maniac,

I'd like to be able to show you a couple different ways to cut your part but unfortunately I have not used "X" since X2 came out. Therefore, anything I sent you would be unusable by you.

Is there any chance you can get a demo copy of X2 ? If so, I would have you send me your file and I could show you how to properly cut the part.

Sure, Mastercam has some things that could use improvement but much of what you are struggling with has more to do with your apparent lack of "seat time".

Let me know if you can get your hands on the newer software. Even though you are still using X it would still be beneficial for you to see how things are supposed to be done since most things are still done the same way...

Actually, I just realized that I have an old install of X-MR1 on this box. No hasp here today but if you attach your .mcx file to a post here (zip it first) I can get back to you in a couple days with some help.

[MachineManiac]

I clearly understand that the problem is the user... but i cant say that this is user friendly program or easily selflearned. My first thought was that CAM programming is very straightforward and high end process as are the milling machines today. This has been quite big surprize to notice the opposite, you have to do a lot of adjustments and design the overall process to have a efficient toolpaths, program does not help that much(my opinion). Im more into designing and this is my first attempt to come to the machining side, it has been very eyeopening.
Of course i would have expected this to be very interactive and visual process but perhaps my expectations were too high..

Im using Solidworks at the moment and i try to figure out is MasterCam really my program afterall. But because it is so widely used, i think it would be good to learn how to use it. I will send to you my last file i'v been working with mastercam, i hope you can help me out with few basics.

[cadcam]

Hi guys please review my poorly done Avi I did for you. but it will answer few thoughts for you.
I did the part with three ops.
Op1 . Drill a hole for the tool to go in to.
Op2 . a pocket with Iland facing
Op3 . Contour to get iland against the wall to finish off.

Hope this helps.www.mastercam-cadcam.com/pocketilands.zip

[MachineManiac]

Here is my MCX file i'v been working with. It might have some silly errors as i have tried almost everything...