Messages

61

General Mach Discussion / Re: Problem with the gear cutting wizards

« on: January 23, 2010, 04:36:45 PM »

Hi Bill

I've used the 4th axis a few times but not that much.
I've got some gears to make for a radial engine so after trying to make the cutter I ended up buying some but I've seen photo's of the eclipse tool, I think it's the eurica tool used in Ivan Law's gears and gear cutting book.

But I've seen an easier way that doesn't require a complicated machine. You form profile then offset it in a 4 jaw chuck and use the profile tool again so that nearly 1/4 is recut and then repeat for the other 3 sides. You then cut out to make 4 teeth with form relief so they can be resharpened.

Steve

62

General Mach Discussion / Re: Problem with the gear cutting wizards

« on: January 23, 2010, 01:40:59 PM »

Hi

Now decided to use a sub to do this so I would like to know of you experts if this is right.
18 tooth gear with the A on the left of teh table and the cutter will be climb milling on the front of the blank from right to left, this part is right for how I want it to cut.
I can't check this on mach as I've got to look after the kids so can't get out to the workshop tonight.

M06 T57 G43 H57 (TOOL/MILL,gear cutter 24 dp)

O1 (tooth cut routine)
G0 Y-3
G0 X0
G0 Y-0.1
G1 Y2.28 F75
G1 X-40 F200
G0 Y-3
G0 X0
M99

G0 A0
M98 P1
G0 A20
M98 P1
G0 A40
M98 P1
G0 A60
M98 P1
G0 A80
M98 P1
G0 A100
M98 P1
G0 120
M98 P1
G0 A140
M98 P1
G0 A160
M98 P1
G0 A180
M98 P1
G0 A200
M98 P1
G0 A220
M98 P1
G0 A240
M98 P1
G0 A260
M98 P1
G0 A280
M98 P1
G0 A300
M98 P1
G0 A320
M98 P1
G0 A340
M98 P1
G0 A360
M05 M30

63

General Mach Discussion / Problem with the gear cutting wizards

« on: January 23, 2010, 09:46:53 AM »

Hi all, hope your all ahving a good new year so far and managing to get those extra pounds back off after christmas, I think I'm almost back to my pre christmas racing snake figure

Anyway, today I'm on with cutting some gears.
Got my rotary setup and machined the blanks to size, fitted the gear cutter and fired up the new fangled wizards, selected the gear cutting one and selected the behind right (slight interferance on the left so for this A's on the right) told it the blank dia, feed clearance cut depth, etc, all in mm, I then pressed the preview code and there was nothing, no code at all.
So I rechecked, still nothing.
I then posted the code to see what came out and there was some code but no angles etc and a very bizar Y move that took the Y over the soft limits, way over the 2.28mm cut depth and no X code for the 50mm move to cut the teeth.

So just to see what it did I clicked run and got the softlimit warning and then after that I couldn't move the mill at all, I tried reset, checked the diagnostic screen and there was still communication with the limit switches.
I then shut down to restart mach and the computer locked up with a softlimit warning that just stayed there flashing with the pc speaker bipping at me.
I had to turn off the computer and it took another restart to get mach communicating with the driver.

I also tried the normal wizards with no luck and no code generated

So has anyone else had this problem with the nf wizards?

Steve

64

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone Here Have Experience Milling 6061-T651 Wrought Plate?

« on: January 23, 2010, 09:14:52 AM »

Ohh and I stick by my old castor oils as a hand applied coolant, complete with methanol and other nasties.

Most soluble oils these days have something in them to stop the growth of the bug that caused coolant to smell, much nicer smelling now than when I were a lad.

Steve

65

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone Here Have Experience Milling 6061-T651 Wrought Plate?

« on: January 23, 2010, 09:11:31 AM »

The only problem with spell check and dictionaries is......     you have to be able to spell to know it's the right spelling of the word!

Having said that I use it all the time

Steve
Sign maker who can't spell.

66

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone Here Have Experience Milling 6061-T651 Wrought Plate?

« on: January 22, 2010, 03:11:53 PM »

The castor oil is for the engine Russ, normal gearbox oil in the gearbox but some people do use castor oil in the gearbox.
Just to clarify, this is oils such as Castrol R, I use Morris MLR40 at £30.00/5ltrs but it only gets used for one meeting then drained out so it makes a good cutting oil, to thick for spraying though so I use a brush and an old hand cream bottle with the press down top.

Other than that I flood coolant with soluble oil on my Alu cutting and I follow my uncles advise and tend to run low surface speeds and high feeds(compaired to modern practice), my mill only has a top speed of 2600rpm anyway so for anything less than a10mm carbide cutter I'm way down on the surface speed.

Steve

67

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone Here Have Experience Milling 6061-T651 Wrought Plate?

« on: January 21, 2010, 03:26:10 PM »

I race grasstrack motorcycles and they use the same engines as speedway bike. These have normally run on castor oil.
I use the old oil as cutting oil and it's really good, no idea why but much better than others I've tried.
Works on band saws, lathe, milling machine and drilling and tapping.

Steve

68

General Mach Discussion / Re: mach 3 and servos do you gain any accuracy

« on: January 21, 2010, 11:58:29 AM »

I almost always get steps on multi pass profile cuts and my mill is an older very well built mill with good quality ball screws and huge over the top steppers.
In fact when cutting profiles out of flat plate sometimes the steps go down both sides of the cutter, on the part and the stock.

About the only way to get rid of these is to have the first cuts slightly bigger than the final finish cut.

Steve

69

General Mach Discussion / Re: Simultaneous 4th Axis..

« on: January 21, 2010, 07:33:49 AM »

Vecric have just added 4th axis support to V Carve pro and Aspire, you design/import the artwork and then use some wizards to wrap it onto a rotary axis.
Not used it yet though many seem to have, have a look on the vectric forum at the bottom

70

General Mach Discussion / Re: Cutting wood quickly with Vectric cut2D?

« on: January 21, 2010, 05:18:48 AM »

I use V Carve pro and I assume it will use the same tool selection system, as Ger21 said the feed is set with the tool so you have to edit the tool.
But you then need to recalculate the toolpaths, just altering the feed rate doesn't automaticly alter it in the calculated toolpath.

Below is a section of one of my Vcarve files.

( for Mach2/3 from Vectric )
( Material Size)
( X= 760.000, Y= 195.000 ,Z= 25.000)
()
(Toolpaths used in this file:)
(V-Carve 3)
(Tools used in this file: )
(1 = V-Bit {90 deg 12 mm})
N100G00G21G17G90G40G49G80
N110G71G91.1
N120T1M06
N130 (V-Bit {90 deg 12 mm})
N140G00G43Z15.000H1
N150S16000M03
N160(Toolpath:- V-Carve 3)
N170()
N180G94
N190X0.000Y0.000F600.0 feed rate set for G1 moves
N200G00X88.410Y87.363Z15.000
N210G00X88.410Y87.363Z3.000
N220G1X88.410Y87.363Z-3.000F200.0 plunge move
N230G1X87.652Y87.724Z-2.797F600.0 feed rate move
N240G1X87.024Y87.994Z-2.682
N250G1X86.402Y88.229Z-2.624
N260G1X85.782Y88.430Z-2.622
N270G1X85.157Y88.598Z-2.679
N280G1X84.646Y88.709Z-2.770
N290G1X84.071Y88.811Z-2.914
N300G1X83.969Y88.681Z-2.798



So you need to looking for feed moves like these.

Steve