Anyway there are benefits from having different co-ordinates at the drawing and part levels when doing more complex work involving having fixtures or maybe a couple of vices and a 4th axis or like here a work holding chuck that has to be indicated in then used then removed again. most people may never use this facility.
Thanks for the example. I understand.
...I'm just starting to have a look at your file Perimeter Profile Part. The only thing I can see is using a starting leadin in the outside space mop I've selected spiral leadin here. This helps the witness mark that you can get with lightweight routers when using no leadin.
Was wondering about the lead in. So far I’ve only been cutting foam so not much of a challenge to even the little router or rattle the router bit. The phenolic composite for the spacer is supposed to be the most free machining variety but is quite a bit harder than hard wood. The only other place I might use a lead in for the same reason are the bores. When is lead out beneficial?
The red I was seeing earlier was that port path had already machined away 0.25 of the Bore Pockets tool paths already and so set the Bore Pockets Stock Surface to -0.125........In the sim pic of this original file that there is a sea of red moves, these are G0's meaning that the machine is moving about the work piece without doing any cutting, for efficiency's sake this is bad. I would before smashing the start button, make some test runs on a piece of excess or left over stock material to get a feel for the feedrate that your machine is happy with, before committing to the stock.
This was my first cb part and I was having difficulty trimming at the intersection of the bores and port path, so I merged them and cut them altogether and then had to go back and machine the remaining 1/8” of bore depth through. The stock thickness in the file says 1” but the actual part is only 3/8” thick. I had turned off all the cb optimization because I wanted to see the ops in order while I was getting errors, and also because I wanted to insure the perimeter was cut last and the guide slots after the port path.
I made a new file that is more efficient Gcode.....
Thank you very much for those. I downloaded them and took a quick look in cb. Looks like it doesn’t recognize the MOP Trochopock (unknown MOP Type) and missing some styles ‘Aluminum Drill and Mill” and ‘FeedRateAdjuster’, and also Tool Index (32) not found. I will look them over more closely a little later. I know I’ve read about tool paths for stock removal but couldn’t find that section on first glance.
One thing to mention is that the sim times are (for various reasons) a bit iffy, ……..The sim time in Mach3 was 1 hour and 32 minutes for the troc file and you still have to take this answer with a grain of salt and is only an estimate. the original file simed at 2 hours 24 minutes.
Ya-know, when I did the air cut, I don’t think it was anywhere near that long. 30-45 minutes, but, I backed the feedrates down from 120in/min to 60 in/min and cant remember if that was before or after the air cut.
As time permits I'll apply those as well to this posted file once you work out you maximum feedrate at maximum depth that your machine is comfortably capable of, this is the figure the troc mops and the feedreate adjuster need and it must be reasonable accurate which you'll have to obtain by trial and error to some degree.
I don’t have any experience with this little router. All my other router motors on my pin router are 3.5HP. Also, not much experience with the phenolic composite, so will be conservative. This a one-time part (though there may be other similar parts) unless I scrap it, so even though optimization isn’t that critical, it’s still good to learn early and on a familiar part because it will become a factor, and 50% reduction in run time isn’t a trivial gain, especially when I get to more complex parts.
I’ve been doing a lot of fine tuning to my hardware, software maintenance, downloading and playing with some plug ins, and just generally tidying things up. I also order stock and some parts. Hopefully I’ll complete all that the remainder of the weekend and get cutting. Thanks for all your help Dave. It is sincerely appreciated.
Best,
Kelly
Show Posts
. I do lightly rap my clay graphite crucibles. They ring unless they get cracked then it's just a dull thud and time to remove them from service. Also, after I temper an aluminum casting it definitely will ring compared to as cast annealed.