Inventor HSM/Fusion: Tilt angle in every 3D operation.

[ArjanDijk]

Quote from Sandvik:

• When using a ball nose end mill, the most critical area of the cutting edge is the tool centre, where the cutting speed is close to zero, which is unfavorable for the cutting process. Chip evacuation at the tool centre is critical, due to the narrow space at the chisel edge.
• Therefore, tilting the spindle or the workpiece 10 to 15 degrees is recommended, which moves the cutting zone away from the tool centre.

It would be great to have this possibility in every 3D finish operation, that way the multiaxis toolpaths will be even better without creating complex extra operations.

Rob showed a workaround to do something like this in HSMWorks "Flow", but it would be better is this is just in every 3D operation.

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

While I'm all for having this possibility but this would create 5-axis simultaneous toolpaths in many(nearly all) cases.

Best case you would pick flow/blend and say tilt a minimum of 10 degrees and you figure out the rest.

I'm not sure with what you mean "Without creating complex extra operations".

This would make the 3D operations very complex themselves.

I think they could do something with the current tilting but it probably needs more 5-axis awareness.

And more 5-axis settings.

[ArjanDijk]

@Laurens-3DTechDraw: I think the current 3d contour is close to the right setting, but tilting is only applied when a holder collides with the stock, if a "always tilt" option was added, 3D contour is good, next one is Parallel that has no tilting, just as scallop and other 3D ops.

Flow is not available in HSM and is more limited in settings.

For sure if you have a forward tilt, the operation needs to check if the tool collides and change the tilt direction.

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

Flow has much more 5-axis control than 3D Contour. So for me, it has more settings.

But you feel those are complicated I guess?

(Blend should be released in all when finished for sure, which is a substitution for 3D Contour in a lot of cases.)

Multi-axis tilting for the other 3D Operations is in beta in HSMWorks. Not sure about Inventor HSM.

The trick is that you wouldn't ever want forward tilt. It would cause you to have to move over no tilt to get to the backwards tilt. So getting this right means always having sideways tilt. I have spoken about this with René, and he understood the desire but to do it right it's harder than you think.

[Rob.Lockwood]

I think there's two primary facets here..

• apply complex multi-axis tilting options to 3d toolpaths - this would be huge, and IMO is needed.. It's a longer term goal, but should have priority even over some of the existing plans like 5x blend, etc. This should include driving the tool vector based on contact point vector, towards a curve/axis/point, etc. These are standard options allowed in basically all serious 5-axis capable softwares.
• allow separation of tool vector from toolpath projection axis. This is basically the first stepping stone towards the longer term allowance described above, and is simply the ability to generate a toolpath from one orientation, but have the tool engage that toolpath from an alternate orientation. I think this is most likely what arjan is asking for, but perhaps it's the above.

In either case, shaft/holder tilt/avoidance needs to be able to be layered on top of this capability. It recently occurred to me that multi-axis shaft/holder avoidance isn't usable within Swarf/Multi-axis contour/Flow, which is kinda ridiculous. Looking at shaft/holder as a long-term solution to multi-axis toolpaths is basically a dead end. It's a safety net, not an effective primary method for driving multiaxis toolpaths.