Cone 3D Ops

[tmodcustoms]

I am making two cones, a "male " and "female" to fit into each other. I did the inversee, female already, took a long time, I did a roughing operation and a second "finishing " operation, because I need the surface to be pretty smooth. But I couldn't figure out rest machining so my second "cleanup " op was the same as the first, with a much smaller step down. It worked, but it spent ten of the eleven hours of machining time cutting air .  The 3D Adaptive operation I have attached below has an option for max roughing and fine roughing, according to the simulation it is hogging out most of the meat with a deeper step down then when it's touching the part it is using the fine step down and it appears to be doing exactly what I would like to accomplish with multiple operations: a roughing and a finishing operation, all in one. 

My question, is this the way you would go about getting this part done? I think if I did it in two separate operations I could do the finer, finishing pass at a lot higher feed rate and the total machining time would be cut by quite a bit. 

Additionally, I am wondering why the simulation shows red lines and tool paths, during the beginning of the operation, I can's see a crash or a reason, or a solution for that matter. I am also wondering why the stock appears to be square even tho I have the correct, cylindrical, shape setup in the setup .

Thanks, and happy fourth!

http://a360.co/29bK1IQ

[Steinwerks]

Adaptive is NOT a finishing operation. It is purely a roughing operation. Contour or Ramp would be good options for finishing operations on this part.

[tmodcustoms]

I increased the fine step down on the adaptive op and added a ramp op. I'm assuming that I need to leave say 0.015 stock to leave, on the adaptive op in order for the ramping op to have leftover material to cut. Do I have to specify the amount of stock I left in adaptive op, in the ramp op, or will it figure that out by itself. If I don't select am amount of stock to leave in the adaptive op will the ramp op cut air, will it cut the difference in the stepover, making the finish smother in the final ramp op than it will be from the adaptive op?

here's the file

http://a360.co/29bK1IQ

[Steinwerks · Accepted solution]

Unless you turn on Rest Machining the 3D toolpath won't look at the previous operation.. In this case that's fine, because you know you've roughed it already. For 3D operations I would never set a roughing toolpath to leave zero material for finishing operations. How much to leave is going to depend heavily on your machine and its capabilities, the material being cut, coolant, etc. Lots of variables that mostly come with experience. In moldmaking it is common to have more than one finishing operation with one or more semi-finishing operations preceding them. Of course it is also common in those instances to have cycle times measurable in double-digit hours.

All that said, I've changed your 3D Adaptive a bit to be more in line with what I'd do given your stock definition and managed to simplify the toolpath quite a bit, as well as bring it way, way down in size. Check out Setup2 (Setup1 is unchanged so you can compare easily).

Hope this helps and lends some insights to programming in HSM.

[tmodcustoms]

Thanks Buddy, that looks great! I'm gonna let her rip and see how it turns out. Seems to be quite a bit faster, a couple hours, 30% or so. Slot clearing was one of the things I wasn't sure about.  I'll post some pics of the final product. Thanks again! 

[Steinwerks]

What's the machine and material? I suspect with some good feed and speed calculation the roughing could be dropped another 15-30%.

[tmodcustoms]

It's aluminum, 6061,on a Tormach 1100. I'm using a new 5\8 ball EM so I'm not exactly sure ow hard I can push it yet. I used a different, new bit onthe last, opposing cone I did and I set the feed\speed a little high and played with the % throttle on the mill and I was able to run it up to about 75IPM , which was about 130% of my estimated F/S so it took quite a bit less time to complete.