Sweep with a solid body

[Anonymous]

Guys,

I know it's been talked about to death. We've tried every way possible over the years to simulate a solid body (ballendmill, whatever) sweeping down a path to subtract material.

Sweep with guide surface or guide rails do not maintain a constant tool width along the path in some cases. It starts out correct, but tends to get narrow over the length of the path and end transition.

Plane normal to end point of a sketch with sweep is not always the correct orientation of the tool to start. Maybe for a simple helix that begins and ends off the part, but I'm talking about more advanced variable helixes and paths that are driven from external macro driven geometry (drill flutes, endmill flutes, lead screws with changing pitch).

Coils done as solid cuts or surfaces can then be followed by rectangular patterns of a solid down a path with direction set to adjust, direction 1, curve length but it ends up leaving a ribbed cusp down the length of the path depending on the number of instances you generate.  This is the closest solution i've gotten to true to life tool path, but it does not follow an externally macro driven path properly.

The problem we have is not being able to create the path, but getting the tool to follow it.

Maybe with extreme patience and hand construction of many trouble spots someone could construct a proper model, but it seems Solidsworks has this functionality out of the box. 

Could someone with expierience with Solidworks comment on how well their Solid Sweep works?

Why is it that Cam manufacturing softwares, Gibbscam etc.. can toolpath and render a complex path correct off wire geometry, but Inventor cannot sweep it properly?

So fellow Inventor Gurus, my question is;    Is this going to be possible down the road? 

Much Thanks,

Rob

[JDMather]

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ROBTRONIX wrote: 

The problem we have is not being able to create the path, but getting the tool to follow it.

Could someone with expierience with Solidworks comment on how well their Solid Sweep works?

Why is it that Cam manufacturing softwares, Gibbscam etc.. can toolpath and render a complex path correct off wire geometry, but Inventor cannot sweep it properly? 

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1. Attach your part file with path here.

2. SolidWorks Sweep Solid limited to cylinder (end mill, not ball end mill).

3. Good question - even Autodesk now has CAM software.

[Marco.Takx]

Hi Rob,

Your wish is also my wish. 

I've posted this Idea and it's now in the top 4 of the wishes for Inventor. 

Hopefully more and more people will like this post to let Autodesk know that this is a must have. 

Please give a like to this post. 

Sweep Solid

Kind regards,

Marco

[Anonymous]

Guys,

A sample part is attached. The spline path is generated by an external macro program. The tool is a 6mm diameter ballendmill (also generated by macro) swept (and rotated) along 3 different paths. With current modeling method you can see how the tool shape gets narrow as it travels along the path. In reality we would not have this narrow condition. 

In this example the ballendmill touches the spline at the exact centerline (tip) at any length along the path. If you were to extend this centerline it would intersect with the X origin centerline of the part. On center Y radial milling type path. It basically just rotates as it travels along the path.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to go about modeling this more accuratly?

Thanks,

Rob