Tapered Cylinder Engraving with SprutCam8

[PayLoad_Mech]

Tormach 770 with 4th axis. Spring loaded, diamond point engraver.
In Sprutcam, I revolved my workpiece to the proper taper then made my Text by Curves in the Model Tab.
Initiated a 2D contour, but it will not let me select the taper as a base surface. I can only select Cylinder, then designate a radius.
Lucky for me, the taper is not that great and I could make it up with the spring engraver, but there must be a way???
Thanks

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[bll230]

can you add the STC file?

[PayLoad_Mech]

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the work and company policy I cannot post specifics such as the .TAP or .stc files. Sorry.

[bll230]

I think I have it figured out. You can create a tapered base surface by highlighting the tapered surface of a part that you load in from CAD before clicking "base surface." You can see the tapered surface in green when you subsequently click on "base surface." You can't use a revolve created in SC.

But it still doesn't engrave the text properly. This is my guess as to why. The possible orientations are as shown in picture 1. The "normal to base surface" has to be on to get the fourth axis working, but a 3 axis mill with a horizontal fourth axis on the table will not have the spindle normal to the tapered surface because the spindle can't tilt over to stay perpendicular to the taper. Consequently Sprut doesn't let you actually use the tapered base surface. Maybe it would work with a 5 axis mill???

So to use the "Normal to base surface" you have to pick a cylinder base surface, any diameter bigger than your part will work. Then check "Allow" on "Toolpath projection." This combination of "normal to base surface" and "Toolpath projection" will accomplish the proper fourth axis motion and put the engraving on the tapered surface. The program does seem to have a bit of trouble calculating the proper depth of the tool paths. I turned on "machining with return" for each curve in the job assignment, see picture 2, so that it would make two passes on each toolpath and that got rid of most of the issue. Maybe a different text font would work better. Hope this helps.

Edit. If my Tormach PCNC mchine definition doesn't load into your SC 8 properly change the machine to generic 4 axis and then change back to your version of the Tormach PCNC machine.

Edit again. I forgot to mention this. The text is distorted slightly because the projection is a flat projection on a curved surface. To get the text undistorted change the curves projected method from "nearest" to "map to UV domain" in the lower portion of the base surface box.