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Rotary axis limitations

Anonymous

Rotary axis limitations

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hello, I am practicing at Fusion 360 and I found something interesting. I have been looking around quite a lot to find a solution and I am giving up... the problem is as follows:

If you want to make something like a helical or bevel gear, the forth axis is not being very compliant.

I tried all kinds of strategies, but I just can't manage to make the program to run along the gear teeth and machine the profile of the tooth ( best I got is a simple slot pattern with 2D pocket). The Rotary extension gives some options, but they are limited. In there  I also  didn't find a way to add multiple passes (that's the first thing I noticed) and there are 3 options for the toolpath :

-Spiral

-Line

-Circular

Non of them are practical for helical gears for example or other helical elements. It would be nice if the "spiral" could be controlled so you can set the starting angle of the helix and then it getting distributed as a  the "line" toolpath. that would give a lot of flexibility and also I had some problems with setting the geometry constraints. it would be nice to just set those on the 3d model instead of making patches and etc.

 

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Accepted solutions (2)
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daniel_lyall
Mentor
Mentor

The rotary toolpath is only for going around something round you should be able to use 3D tool paths to cut the gear teeth, you just program one and pattern the rest. 


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Daniel Lyall
The Big Boss
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My Websight, Daniels Wheelchair Customisations.
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Anonymous
Not applicable

That only works for short gears. If they are longer, they have to be made in sections 

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daniel_lyall
Mentor
Mentor

If you select from the bottom on one side to the other it can cut the entire tooth, if you attach a model of the gear you are testing with it would help.


Win10 pro | 16 GB ram | 4 GB graphics Quadro K2200 | Intel(R) 8Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v3 @ 3.50GHz 3.50 GHz

Daniel Lyall
The Big Boss
Mach3 User
My Websight, Daniels Wheelchair Customisations.
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Anonymous
Not applicable

I attached 2 examples. one is a standard gear pulled out of the solid works library and the other is just a example that I designed for practice. It needs to be done with a form mill or adaptive strategy that would leave good surface finish in the contact area of the teeth. I am new at Fusion and I am sure I have a lot more to learn, but I just didn't find a way to make it that would sound practical. It needs to be made with a very small tool  and small feed so it wont brake it .  

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daniel_lyall
Mentor
Mentor

The example gear use whats here to get the toolpath See this video for selecting toolpaths https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATs4rsI_TPc

 

Example attached.


Win10 pro | 16 GB ram | 4 GB graphics Quadro K2200 | Intel(R) 8Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v3 @ 3.50GHz 3.50 GHz

Daniel Lyall
The Big Boss
Mach3 User
My Websight, Daniels Wheelchair Customisations.
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daniel_lyall
Mentor
Mentor
Accepted solution

The one you are testing with will need a 4 or 5 axis toolpath to finish it you can use a wrap toolpath to rough it out.


Win10 pro | 16 GB ram | 4 GB graphics Quadro K2200 | Intel(R) 8Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v3 @ 3.50GHz 3.50 GHz

Daniel Lyall
The Big Boss
Mach3 User
My Websight, Daniels Wheelchair Customisations.
Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Hello again, 

well, you will probably agree with me that this example is not very practical. with the adaptive and the parallel the tooth is not machined all the way and it takes 10h to make one single tooth (40 teeth = 400h) lets say it could be reduced in half by optimizing the toolpath and sacrificing some roughness  and it will still take too long. That strategy would work for short gears and still will not be optimal. 

I think the best way to figure it out is if the Fusion Support team does some updates. On a conventional machine this could be done very easy, on a CNC it should be even simplified. I saw these videos and I was hoping on a similar result. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz1-vW-CaPw&ab_channel=BudikaryaTeknik

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROCt9BHKcQU&t=10s&ab_channel=TmSkrbl

 I don't think they have been done on Fusion 

 

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it :slightly_smiling_face: 

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Anonymous
Not applicable

May be it can be done with designing the gear teeth like multiple slots ( kind of like stairs) and then wrapping a 2d adaptive to cut the extra material of every step and then using the rotary option with a ball nose. that would reduce the machining time a lot 

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daniel_lyall
Mentor
Mentor
Accepted solution

That's continuous 4th axis cutting fusion is going there one of these days more than like in the extensions though.


Win10 pro | 16 GB ram | 4 GB graphics Quadro K2200 | Intel(R) 8Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v3 @ 3.50GHz 3.50 GHz

Daniel Lyall
The Big Boss
Mach3 User
My Websight, Daniels Wheelchair Customisations.
Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

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