Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Extruded Sketch as stock solid in HSMWorks...Awesome stuff

There are a few ways that you can go about creating stock solids or defining the stock solids in HSMWorks, but today we are going to focus on the "From Extruded Sketch".

First with a part open I am going to create a sketch on the bottom of the part.  And i am doing this because i know that i am going to fixture this part and i can define the offset below the part for the amount of material that is going to be in the fixture.
With the new sketch we can sketch out any kind of shape that we need to define for our stock.  Here i am going to do something like what is in the pic below.

With that we can go ahead and finish the sketch.
Next let's pick on the job setup button to go ahead and start setting this part up for programming.

In the Setup go to the Stock section and pick on the pulldown that shows relative Size box.

Once I select "From Extruded Sketch"; I then get the option to select the sketch that i want to extrude from.  When you pick the sketch you then have the option to define the offsets for the stock.

Now, there are 2 offset values that you are going to work with:
Stock offset: This is basically the distance in -Z in which your stock is going to go.
Height: Overall height of the stock solid being represented.

Once you have these values defined then you are ready to start putting toolpaths on the part!

happy Programming!








Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Inventor ilogic to create Soft Jaw and stock block

I mentioned in a previous post that I had created ilogic rules within Inventor that would create my soft jaws with defined grooves and then a stock solid.  Currently this program only does a single part fixture setup but soon I am going to expand it to do 2 clamp positions

In later posts we can look at how to set some of these rules up so that you can play with the creation of these features on your own as well.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Soft Jaw and Stock Automation in Fusion 360.

The thing that limits us from being able to do some pretty awesome stuff within our CAD/CAM software is either us having the time or the capability to create automation programs to help make your life as a programmer easier.  I have created in Inventor, ilogic rules that creates soft jaws and a stock solid for me to mill from.
I have also created today the same ability as an addin for Fusion 360.  to where you can select either from a standard jaw size or create your custom jaw size.  Then define a box solid to be created to define a stock solid.
Here is the link to this video.

https://youtu.be/J_NSDjCDvcg

Friday, June 19, 2015

Workaround for Plunge milling (until we get the toolpath)

What I want to show can be used the same way in Inventor, Fusion 360, and SolidWorks.
So, what i want to look at is a way to create a plunge milling toolpath without actually having the toolpath available in the software.  There are a couple of different ways that you can go about doing this.  The first option is creating a one line sketch where that line is a certain distance above the part and then goes down to a given depth inside the pocket that you are trying to plunge mill.
On your CAM ribbon under the 2D milling toolpaths select the toolpath called "Trace".  Once you have selected the tool that you want to use; go to the geometry tab and select the one line that we created in the sketch.
Once this is done, you can then create a linear pattern of the toolpath and the spacing distance would be the tool vendors recommendation on stepovers, and then the quantity would be whatever it takes to get to the end of your part.  For the part i am working with here are the values that i am using; the distance spacing is .125 in, and then the quantity is 193.
The one downfall to doing the linear patter is that it basically creates 193 operations; so, when you go to post it the output will literally show 193 operations in the code.

A second way of doing this is by creating a sketch along the length of the part and doing a one line sketch then doing a linear pattern of that one line the 193 instances.  Then create a Trace toolpath and in the geometry tab for the geometry selection go back to the model browser and select the sketch that you created.  this will automatically define all the lines in the sketch as the geometry that it needs to follow.  Then you can post out this one operation and it will make all the passes for the plunge milling.

Another option, if you are worried about chip breaking at all is to do the one line sketch and create a drill operation with the plunge milling tool.  And when in the drill operation on the geometry tab, change the selection from surfaces to "Selected Points".  With this change you can select the top point of the line and then the bottom point to actually define the depth of the toolpath.  Then move over to the "Cycle" tab and change to the cycle type that you want for Chip Breaking.  Once created you can go ahead and do the linear pattern operation.  Doing this by the drilling method doubles the cycle time compared to the Trace operation, but it is all in how you want the plunge milling to actually function.

**Disclaimer - be sure to use the vendor specified stepovers for any plunge mills!***

Good luck and Happy Programming!




Thursday, June 18, 2015

The place for tips and tricks for CAD/CAM...

The meaning behind this blog is to help CAD/CAM users by providing tips and tricks and a little extra knowledge in the products that they use.  The primary products being applied are CAD: SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360.  The primary CAM products are HSMWorks for SolidWorks, Inventor HSM, and Fusion 360 CAM.

I hope that you find this blog to be of some help and if you are able to solve some questions or gives you "That's how you do that" moments that is a great thing.