CAM: 3.5 axes (e.g. ultrasonic cutter)

[Anonymous]

Hi all. Is there already / will there eventually be support for generating 3.5 axis toolpaths for use with ultrasonic cutters? On such machines, the cutter resides on a rotaty axis that must explicitly be oriented tangentially to the XY toolpath.

[Steinwerks]

Is this like 3+1 where you have to set your orientation for each toolpath? Because that can already be done.

OR does this mean that you have to orient the head based on direction of travel according to the XY plane?

Perhaps the best thing would be to provide a link to the machine, or a video of it running.

[Anonymous]

The blade is maintained, via gcode, tangential to the XY movement as it occurs. See this video.

[George-Roberts]

I would have thought this would be handled in the controller :/. I believe you could achieve this with some logic in the PP.. It would be worth contacting your local reseller as this could be a pretty time consuming modification (unless someone here is willing to do it)

Do you know why this isn't handled at the controller?

[George-Roberts]

Could you also upload a sample file which you have run on your machine? Would give a better understanding of what the output should look like

[Anonymous]

Context: I'm building a custom cartesian (XYZA) machine on my spare time. Planning to use a Smoothieboard 5X as a controller, feeding final gcode to it in console mode, via a USB serial connection and a custom program.

Looking at the Fusion gcode output file obtained by a 2D trace over some connected splines, I see that writing an external program in C# (that's my daytime job) to insert simple G0s and G1s for the blade's axis shouldn't be a problem. I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss an existing, native Fusion capability.

It's probably possible to write a custom Post Configuration file that handles tangential cutting, and I'd be glad to try. This page, (http://fusion360.autodesk.com/learning/learning.html?guid=GUIDDE2C6200-5F85-45FA-9AE6-D66205125BDE), in its last paragraph, says "For additional information on development of post processing configurations, please consult the post processing documentation which accompanies CAM.", but I couldn't find such documentation. Any link, anyone? Thanks.

[Steinwerks · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous

Try here: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/post-processors/help-my-post-processor-needs-to-be-edited-now-what/td-...