Best way to CAM a helical gear?

[Anonymous]

I will have a 4th axis that I can use for my mock up helical gear. I am trying to figure out what CAM cycle(s) would be the best one to form the teeth. I plan to use a ball end mill for the work. I see that others on YouTube have been able to do live 4th axis to help them get their gears cut out, but I can't seem to get Fusion CAM to want to do it.

I was hoping that there would be a way to machine out one tooth at a time and just have the 4th axis do live machining to index itself as needed for the end mill to reach all the places where it needs to go.

Here is my file:

Any ideas?

[daniel_lyall · Accepted solution]

Are you planing to rough the teethe out first then finish with a ball mill or try and do it in one go.

Using the ramp toolpath then doing a pattern toolpath of 32 times works ok

[Anonymous]

I figured I could try to do it with two tools. One slightly larger to rough out as much as it can reach and then a smaller one running higher RPM to do the finish pass.

[Anonymous]

I cant find this pattern tool path you speak of.

[daniel_lyall]

It's under the setup menu

[Anonymous]

Oh, ok. That's very interesting. I can use one tool path and then drop it into a pattern folder to duplicate the rest of the teeth since they are the same.

[Anonymous]

I see this does indexed 4th axis. Is live 4th axis still in development?

[daniel_lyall]

Continus 4th axis is still in development.