Is there a way to remove large blocks of material quickly?

[liam.carr59V7G]

So I machine a lot of foam and it would be good to have the option to remove large chunks of material by cutting a few deep intersecting slots and just letting the chunk fall away kind of like when using a hot wire. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about doing this in Powermill?

Thanks

Liam

[TK.421]

what density foam? for anything less than 10#, I bury my 8" flute cutter and raster back and forth with a 3" step up. after that I'll raster finish with thickness to get rid of steps.

you could draw couple straight lines in a pattern and use pattern finishing, maybe? sounds like a good idea in my head

[RAL6000]

I´m using Special milling tool for styrofoam.

My Foam is cheapest Standard styrofoam which they are also using to build house Isolation.

Ø50mm, Cutting Length up to 600mm

With that tool on my standard foam i can just mill with finishing toolpaths. No roughing toolpaths needed in my case.

Other Alternative could be to design a hotwire tool, their are a lot of Videos on YouTube when you search by "hotwire robotic".

[kukelyk]

Do You mean remove falling parts from stockmodel?

[alexandre.pintoAGNAU]

Hi Liam,

I presume you want to use your robot to mill large volumes of EPS foam.

The easiest and quickest way to remove material is with a hot wire cutter. The only issue is you need to attach to the robot the end effector as pictured below.

In order to program with such a device in PowerMill you need a specific mtd created for it, basically replicating with some accuracy the robot setup. Just like your current mtd is defined with a spindle. You would have to have one specific for the hot wire.

Below a few images to help explain the process.

Programming normally is with 2D lines drawn on the sides of the block, imported or converted to patterns in PM.

A pattern toolpath is used to generate the simulation.

red line is tool length, this is normally adjusted to place end effector in desired distance/position.

black line is a pattern

 

 In the mtd the head attach point (place where tool is attached to) must be calculated on one of the corners where wire attaches to the structure.

On the robot the tool data/TCP (XYZABC) must replicate the tool position as it is in PM.

I have seen simple aluminium extruded profiles used as light weight structure for this.

Previous pictures where of hot wire specific robots. You need to mill so I recommend not removing the spindle otherwise you loose your calibration data. And this is important for 5 axis milling. So if you can attach the hot wire without removing your spindle this is better.

Most users that want to do both have a quick release coupling and change heads, pretty much like changing tool.

I hope this helps.