Keep the tool down and not retract

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone I am trying to work through a problem so I made a short screencast of the problem 

Please any help would greatly be appreciated 

thanks 

[LibertyMachine]

Would you mind exporting and sharing your file? The question you ask is clear, so that's not why I'm asking. I'm wondering what values you might have for Stock to Leave, Min cutting radius, and other operation setting that would effect the end result. What's the tool diameter and what is the size of the space between each disc?

To share: File > Export > Save to local folder. Return to this thread and attach your .f3d file in your next reply

[Anonymous]

certainly sorry I forgot to add that 

[LibertyMachine]

The tool will not get in between the caps with the given settings. You have a "Stock to Leave" value of .01" and a Min Cutting Radius of .0125". There is only .138" between each cap. The only way you could expect to get through there with no/minimal retractions is: 

1a) Turn off Stock to Leave

1b)Set Min Cutting Radius to a very small value

or

2) Use a smaller tool

On a separate note; Man! This file is taking forever to generate the code! I'll post up my results if it ever finishes processing.....

[Anonymous]

thanks yeah I know with the stock to leave setting on I have to use a smaller tool

but even with stock to leave turned off and minimum cut radius set to 0 it is still trying to helix down in a bunch of different positions 

its actually 13 seconds faster to have the stock to leave turned on and then go back and do the contour operation vs just use the pocket operation to mill out the entire thing and I think that the part can be made faster if the tool would just stay down during the pocket operation 

and how would i get it to stay down all the time on the contour operation if I wanted to use that as a finishing pass of sorts 

[LibertyMachine]

For the staying down during the 2D Contour; Even though you had it turned on, it's still lifting up. Why is that? It's because it's allowed to choose it's own start point on each cap. If you select a start point on row of the caps like this (as well as set your lead in and out):

You'll get results like this:

What's the end goal with cycle time? Do you have hundreds of these to make and you are trying to save as much time as possible? Is a larger tool an option for removing larger amounts of stock? What about plunging right into material, or using a coarser helix?

[Anonymous]

hmmm okay yeah i see what you are saying could you shoot me the file back so i can take a look at what you did please

thanks

[LibertyMachine]

Here you go.

I just worked on the Contour on this file.

[Anonymous]

So basically these are prototypes right now but there is potential to make alot of them so cycle time is of a concern to me I want to get the machining done as fast as possible

also i do not have a tool changer so the less tools that I need to use the better I imagine that I could have a custom endmill made that is a little bigger but I am not sure that its worth the cost to do so

I have never set entry points like that how does that exactly work? and why does that tell fusion to change the tool path completely around?

and I would not want to plunge on the main roughing operation but no problem with plunging on the finishing operation 

[Anonymous]

So here is with the tool lifting up all the time and then the second picture is with the tool staying down I would say a dramatic difference for sure! Thanks for that tip

Now what do you think I could do to improve the pocket roughing tool path?

and entire cycle time is down to around 20 min it was around an hour when I first started 

[LibertyMachine]

To select start pints, first thing is to go to the last tab of the operation and click on the "Start Point" button. Second thing; go to the feature you want to specify and move your mouse around until you find the snap location. Circles currently only have one snap point (it would be so great if it supported quadrants) once you find it's spot, click it and then repeat for the next circle. '

Why changing a row effects the entire part? Not sure, tbh.

I'll continue playing with the pocketing routines and see if I can squeak a little time out of it. But honestly, it's not that bad of a time and I'd think you'd have to be doing a serious quantity of these for it to matter. In which case, you are really going to want the best tooling you can find and be as aggressive as your equipment will allow

[Anonymous]

So I made a pocket operation with a custom .138" tool and it still wants to helix down all over the place but it does save around 23 seconds over the other strategies plus its only 1 operation so that means smaller gcode file perhaps but I still want it to stay down lol 

[Anonymous]

oh okay yeah I will have to try and read up on why it changes the tool path when you do that

and yeah I know you could spend weeks dialing everything in for a ultra high production enviroment with special tools, special machines, and call in an application engineer which this project is not all of that

but I still want to get this down to a super quick toolpath because my customer is trying to go to china over me because he doesn't think I can produce them for cheaper in the USA than CHINA and I know that I can I just have to figure out how

I can still play with the feedrates I am only running 132 ipm I might be able to go faster but its a rather small endmill in hardwood

[LibertyMachine]

A larger tool is not going to work better for keeping it down. The point of a large tool is to remove larger amount of material out of the pocket. By larger, I'm talking a quarter inch endmill, not .013" bigger. You will have helices all over the place, but with a LARGE tool it will be in the part a lot less time.

I get what you are saying about keeping the tool down and in the cut, but I'm thinking the only way you are going to get that is to actually go to a smaller tool, such as .109 or even smaller

I'm wondering if you could achieve what you are looking for with some clever sketches

Going against China is not in a spot you want to be with a machine that is limited in it's capacity, let alone absent a tool changer.

Shaving 13 seconds off a job is useless, not to be rude. You need to shave off enough to equal X amount of parts extra in a shift (plus some wiggle room). One bathroom break and you've lost all your profit

[Anonymous]

okay yeah I am going to mess around with using a larger tool to clear out the material faster in the roughing pass and then go back to using the contour with a .125" standard tool I bet that will save me some time I see what you are saying

Let me try that out really quick and see what happens

I really don't want to go smaller on the tool because then I would have to drop the feedrate and that would mean longer cycle time

And yeah hmm i am interested in what you mean by the sketches I am not sure I would even know where to start when it comes to using the sketches in this particular case

and yeah no offense taken but as a small business I am against really everyone in the market place not just China and the fact that I don't have the capital to go buy a 200,000 cnc router I have to get creative in the way that I do things and at time I mean really creative.

I know I post these cycle times and they are not the most accurate because your right I have to cut one side and then manually flip it over and change the tool and go again so there is alot of time wasted there but whatever I can do to get the actual time the tool is in the material down to a absolute minimum there better off I will be and I will just have to eat all the extra time until I can get a better faster machine

but this is good practice for when I do get the faster machine I will have already been thinking about how to truly optimize cycle times at the basic level

and I have exactly 9 min 11 seconds to run to the bathroom I bet I could do that lol especially if I set up 40 of these parts on my machine with that cycle time each I can go take a nap before I have to come back and flip them

[Anonymous]

HAHA thats what I am talking about lol

[Anonymous]

You are right though I will amend my statement by saying I currently can't tell my customer that I can absolutely beat China or some other very large machine shop with millions of dollars of equipment but I can tell them that I can come close and not have to wait 3 weeks for things to come over on a boat imo

[Anonymous]

I was thinking if I was to cut 9.7" squares on the table saw and then used a 4th axis rotary table on one end and a rotating clamp on the other to flip the part automatically I could even further reduce the overall time of the job I would still have to manually change tools but the only other step would be to load the material into rotary table

that might be an option of course then you would have to baby sit the machine all day long and really could not leave its side for longer than a couple minutes  

[LibertyMachine]

A million different ways. What is your CNC machine?

Get the notion of "million dollars of equipment" or $200k router out of your head. You'd be surprised at how little it takes to be profitable and efficient. You could likely get into a router with tool changer for under 80k.

It all depends on what your projected shop rate should be, how many other tasks you should be completing etc. My opinion, find a way to get the machine to run for a loooong time. Who cares if each part takes 2 min longer. With the time you have free, you DON'T go take a nap or watch tv. You run another machine, you program your next job, you prep parts for the current machine. Don't look at it as "this machine needs to make $xx an hour". It's more "the shop" needs to be making $xx an hour. 

If you aren't going to be standing in front of it (the machine) to tend it, there is a lot more room to move on pricing. I have 2 machines in my shop, a new Mori DuraVertical that see a LOT of high tolerance short running parts, and an old '82 Matsuura that sees several long running jobs. If I make half the amount per hour on the Matsuura, I don't care, because it's just running unattended and it's paid for. Steady income stream that pays my wage and a little extra with no appreciable tooling costs (aluminum work)

[Anonymous]

1 of my machines I am using for this job is a CNC Router Parts Pro4896

and I could not agree more with your statements thats why I try and produce the best possible cam strategies for the current tools that I have because I know that if I do things right I can make a extremely profitable and productive machine no matter what said machine is

If I can get cycle time per part into a manageable time frame then I can set 40 of them up on the machine and walkaway to do said other things I just have to meet a certain parts per day goal imo

so if we are sitting at 5 minutes each x40 that frees up a little over 3 hours of time so I can do other things

then I flip the material

5 minutes machining time on the other side

thats around lets say 7-8 hours to complete 40 parts which say at 15.00 each that makes the shop 600.00 a day off 1 machine with around 1-2 hrs of interaction time total.

but if cycle time per part is 9 minutes per side we are looking at a minimum of 12 hrs straight machine time

so its beneficial for me to save all the time I can get in each individual part to hit potential customer requirements

I get what you are saying about if it takes a little longer who cares but when you get a PO for a 1000 units and you need those by a certain date you would be wishing that you took the time to streamline the process even when you where only making 1 unit a day.

I think with machines like mine without the fancy tool changers etc its all a balancing act of how you allocate your time at and away from the machine

and once the word gets out about what you can do with this simple machine imagine what you can do with a better machine