5 Axis Machine Setup
I have what I would think would be a pretty common machine setup but I'm having a heck of a time getting the configuration to work in Madcam. I have a 5 axis DMS router with a B/C head. B axis tilts -116 to +116 degrees with 0 degrees pointing straight down at the table. The C axis rotates around parallel to the Z axis and can go -4 degrees to + 364 degrees.
I tried those settings in the machine config but the simulator and posted GCode seem to ignore the angle limits and will ouput things like -180 degrees on the C axis or +180 degrees on the B axis, well outside the limits. I have tried every combination of settings in the machine config page with various bad results. Here is my current config which will work on some outside shapes like a hemisphere but gives illegal B axis angles on inside curved faces...
I had to put the C axis limits to 0 and +180 to get it to limit it's travel there, when I put -4 and +364 or even 0 and +360 it would still output values up to -180 degrees.
Is there something that would make this configuration not supported without a custom DLL or am I doing something fundamentally wrong here?
Btw, I'm using the latest pre-release version of Madcam.
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Re: 5 Axis Machine Setup
I wanted to add a diagram showing the rotational axis orientations since I'm not sure my post was clear enough. Here is a diagram...
I also wanted to add that I can make indexed 5 axis work but when I try to use continuous 5 axis that's when things go horribly wrong.
Re: 5 Axis Machine Setup
Have you asked the MadCAM folks about this yet? They are the ones who seem to be saying that this is supposed to work. It sounds like you're stretching its capabilities with a pre-release version. Are you using Rhino 6 with this?
[FONT=Verdana]Andrew Werby[/FONT]
[URL="http://www.computersculpture.com/"]Website[/URL]
Re: 5 Axis Machine Setup
I haven't submitted anything to Joakim yet because I had hoped it was a simple error I was making. I have to use the pre-release version because that's the only one that will run on Windows 10. I'm running Rhino 5 as I don't think Madcam supports Rhino 6 yet.
Re: 5 Axis Machine Setup
Maybe a small bug in their code? Simplest answer.
Cheers
Roger
Re: 5 Axis Machine Setup
In case anyone else runs into this, I guess I had the whole thing kind of inside out and backwards. After looking at everything again, I changed my config as shown below and it seems to simulate and cut correctly now at least for simple shapes. I'm going to play with it more with complex shapes to make sure it works in every case but so far so good. Thanks to everyone who chimed in with thoughts and private messages.
Re: 5 Axis Machine Setup
The vital part in debugging things often turns out to be the act of explaining the problem to someone else.
Cheers
Roger
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