(upbeat music)
- [Karlo] Good morning and
welcome to our webinar.
Thank you for coming
and congratulations on your commitment,
you never stop exploring new ideas.
My name is Karlo Apro,
I'm Strategic Technical Specialist
at CNC software Mastercam.
Every great leap of technology
is a result of someone
thinking outside the box
and trying something new.
Usually against the prevailing dogma.
In this example,
man cannot fly.
It took 400 years to
go from Leonardo's idea
to a practical recorded flight.
Moving from predictable
to the unknown means
taking a chance, a risk.
Fear often blocks taking that step.
Overcoming that fear can lead to new
and exciting opportunities.
Did you know that flight was
possible over 5,000 years ago,
the materials were available
to build a Rogallo type
hang glider way back then.
Many textbooks were written in history
on how to build a sailing ship,
but textbook knowledge
can only take you so far.
Textbooks can help you
learn existing practices.
They give you information,
knowledge comes from experience,
but imagination can make you sore.
In 5,000 years no one thought
of using the sail for flying.
We went to space before Francis Rogallo,
a NASA engineer invented
a non powered glider
to help spacecraft recoveries.
His invention started a sport
of hang glider in the seventies.
The first of those were built from canvas,
bamboo and piano wire.
Just imagine where could evolution be,
if someone imagined this 5,000 years ago.
In today's webinar,
we will not spend much time
on how to run Mastercam.
Let's pretend that
we all know textbook Mastercam inside out.
You will get a chance
to see detailed presentations
on how to run Mastercam
from our AES during
these Wednesday webinars.
We will explore applied
imagination instead,
through a collection of
stories from our customers.
It is the carpenter,
not the tool after all.
Our customers innovate every day
to solve the worst
manufacturing challenges.
This is what we call dynamic thinking.
Let us indulge in some
applied imagination together.
Imagination that will take us
from the three to a
5-axis realm and beyond.
So what drives CNC machines?
Yes, most of you would say G-code
but more importantly your imagination.
Machining is an art driven
by your imagination.
Your CAD/CAM and your CNC equipment
would all sit idle
without your imagination.
This example shows one of our customers
cutting a stair thread
prototype out of wood
Experimenting with different
cutting strategies,
using a circular saw
and a buttonose cutter
like we advanced this to
show the circular saw.
So we using a 5-axis machine
and we are tilting this
a clear wood collisions.
I just gonna advance here
because I have a lot of
materials to go through.
And here we are cutting
that same shape with our buttonose cutter.
So we are doing some experimentation
thinking outside the box.
This is part of our
signature parts project,
a collection of real
life examples inspired
by our customers.
They are designed to
demonstrate the combined power
of Mastercam and our
end users imagination.
This part came from this picture.
Our goal is to step outside the textbook
and show you the power
of Mastercam in context.
So we are cutting each individual step.
This is how we're gonna fixture it
and for the prototype,
all we're doing is we machine one side,
and then we glue some lumber on,
and we will then machine that.
This is just showing in the interface,
what this looks like.
Why use a circular saw you may ask?
Because we are planning to cut
this Stair Tread from granite.
As you can see,
this machine has 5-axis heads
with multiple tooling options.
This circular saw can cut
granite way more efficiently
than a buttonose cutter,
but we must gradually tilt
the tool to avoid collisions.
Let me just show you that here.
But before we get into how to
program a machine like this,
let's start with a simple example.
Let's exercise our imagination,
dynamic thinking together.
Imagine that you own a machine shop
and your customer sends
you the solid model.
He wants you to make five parts.
New customer, wants to
see your workmanship.
What is the most important
first step you will take?
And this is a step you will
not find in a textbook.
Process planning, visualization.
What you're visualizing
depends on your ability,
the tools and equipment you have.
You will try to make these parts
from what tools you already have
so that you can keep the cost down.
You will do the best job you can
because you know that this is a test.
If you do a good job,
you may get a big order.
Let's say that you have a 2-axis CNC late
and a 3-axis CNC mail
and let's pretend that we all
know Mastercam inside out.
So I likely first operation is turning.
You probably will turn the
material out from a stock
and end up at a part looking like this.
Next operation will be building a fixture
from what you already have at
hand V-block clamp and vise.
A good toolmaker
will go through the steps
of indicating it made sure
that pivot is plumb in the center
and then generate
a few very simple contour
engineering operations.
So lemmie just play the animation.
Took out the highlighted
areas on this part.
Very simple to the
contouring operation here.
So you would machine
all five parts like this
and the next operation
you would flip the part over,
orient the holes from
the previous operation,
install a star for consistency,
carefully clean the fixture,
generate a simple contour toolpath
to machine the highlighted area
and machine all five parts like this.
Operation four, you would
relocate the fixture to make sure,
and indicate to make sure it's level.
Find the center again,
orient the previously machine features,
any install, stop
somewhere for consistency.
Then washing the highlighted
areas, again, automation.
Using simple contour toolpath.
So every toolpath is very simple.
You will do everything very carefully
will clean the picture in between
and you will probably use lose
money on these five parts.
Now you made all the decisions,
the textbook only told you
how to create toolpaths.
You need to be a skilled
toolmaker to make all this happen.
So as a result,
you got the job.
150 parts to be delivered in 30 days.
Will you cut these the same way?
Will you use dynamic thinking,
or will you say,
"let's not change,
we have always done it this
way and never had a problem."
Can you improve your
manufacturing process?
Well, if you may have
a simple rotary device
to bolt onto your 3-axis
machine like this one here,
and you can easily make
a slight improvement
to your existing fixture,
basically just a plate that
is bolted onto the V-block.
And then you may cut it this way.
So we using the same exact
operations we used before,
the same old school toolpaths,
but, we have eliminated
a bunch of setup steps
because if you put the part
in to this picture once
and then the machine does
the flipping for you,
you don't have to clean
the fixture in between.
You only have to indicate
that the first part
and you don't really need
to be a skilled toolmaker
to run this process.
You can cut through the whole thing
and again, I'm gonna jump ahead
to show you how the machine flips, cuts
that same 2D contour operation here,
and then rotates again to
cut the last operation here.
So cutting it this way actually
was simpler to do than
cutting individual parts.
Thanks to our dynamic thinking,
which resulted in an even bigger order.
Now, how can you deliver consistently
on time 500 parts per month for two years?
By the way,
this is how most of
our customers progress.
You are rewarded with more work,
as you prove your ability to deliver.
Maybe it is time to upgrade
your mill turn machine.
Let's look at this closely.
We have eliminated more setups operations,
and we are now using
Dynamic Motion Technology
for both turning and milling operations.
We will have a dedicated presentation
on Dynamic Motion Technology,
one of our dynamic thinking webinars.
Again, the textbook then tell you
how to create each individual operation,
but it will be up to you,
your creativity and imagination
to sequence the execution.
The magic is in you.
Now here we also upgraded the toolpath.
This is the Dynamic Motion Technology
where we use the full fluid of this cutter
and the maintaining constant
engagement of the two.
So we are never overloading the tool
which results in constant heat generation
that heat is actually
going out with the chips,
resulting in longer tool
light in reduced cycle time.
So, we will use a latest
Mastercam technology,
we will use for our transfer,
some pinch turning.
So we are most efficient with our turning.
You're doing turning and
milling at the same operation
and by the way,
we are simulating all this in simulation
and if there is any errors,
we can see them here
and not only errors
we can see how the motion
the machine is moving,
and we can make changes easily to here.
We can say,
"okay, I didn't like the way the,
of the sequence
I can make the changes
here instead of coming
to the machine and making it there."
So putting it all into practice,
I just gonna play this animation,
if you look at this part here.
It will be very challenging
to cut this part on a 3-axis machine
or to do it with only on indexing method.
The truth is that most 5-axis
jobs require a combination
of many indexing
and some simultaneous motion.
Learning how to control 5-axis machine
will open many new possibilities for you.
Trying something new brought us to here,
but we still only scratched
the surface of 5-axis possibilities.
We have only used the very
basic indexing 5-axis method
where we attacked the part from different,
but locked planes.
Now we are using some 4-axis
and 5-axis simultaneous motion
for cutting some of the
more complex features.
Like if I go ahead and jump ahead here,
this is still just
positioning motion so far.
We're doing, right here
we're doing some 4-axis,
continuous motion to cut those fillets.
And then as we progress
further, more 4-axis.
And then when you wanna cut this chamfer,
see this chamfer this
inside and outside chamfer,
we wanna cut that in
one continuous motion.
We must have 5-axis motion.
So let's just jump ahead there.
Here we go and cutting that inside chamfer
and as you can see we are
following the chamfer,
we are also oscillating
that two open down,
this way we can use the fluid,
the whole fluid of the
cutter more efficiently.
So I just gonna go ahead, jump ahead.
Mastercam offers toolbox
full of 5-axis control
so you can drive any CNC machine.
Mastercam is easy to learn.
All resellers are expert trainers.
You can also find Mastercam
textbook instructions online,
and we have very extensive context,
sensitive help system.
These dynamic thinking
webinars are designed
to help you with the non-textbook concepts
of making multiaxis machines dance.
Here are some of the textbook concepts
of how we control multiaxis machines.
We have the three main controls,
we have cut pattern, tool axis
control, collision control.
Now those of you
who are coming from a 3-axis world,
already familiar with cut pattern,
the straight line is a cut pattern,
a circle is a cut pattern, zigzag,
there is many cut patterns.
Tool axis control is a new concept.
Simple explanation is,
say you have a normal to a surface.
If I'm normal to a surface,
I will be perpendicular to this surface.
If I'm cutting down this blue line
and I fail to tilt forward,
we call that a lead angle.
Leaning backwards would be a lag angle,
side tilt angle this will lean sideways.
We can lock our tool to a plane,
we can use lines,
we could draw some lines
along our cut pattern
and tell Mastecam just
align my tool to those lines
as you go along,
You can create a point in space
and if this is my cut pattern
this blue line, sorry.
So if this blue line is my cut pattern,
my point is the from point
for my tool axis control,
Mastercam will follow the cut pattern
with the nose of the tool
and point the back of
the tool from that point.
The opposite of that is to point.
So I can create a point in space,
cut pattern is the same here,
the tool is following the cut pattern
and it's pointing towards
that point all the time.
You can draw a chain.
So there is many different ways
you can control the tool axis
and I won't go through all of them.
And then we have the collision control.
This combination here is actually an old,
very old 5-axis programming trick.
Some call this the clean
core programming method
and actually we will have
a detailed presentation
on how to do this later in I
think next week or week after.
So this toolpath is a
combination of three controls.
The cut pattern
is just a slice parallel
cuts along this parts.
The tool axis control is
normal to the surface,
but not normal to the,
this human head.
It's normal to this
core that we put inside.
And then collision
control or tooltip control
we told Mastercam to never
violate this human head,
which is a whole bunch of surfaces.
So this resulted in a clean toolpath,
not violating this outside surface.
Here's an example
of how much shield trimming
toolpath creation workflow.
So what happens when you
creating a toolpath in Mastercam?
Or 5-axis toolpath?
clot pattern is this blue spline.
That blue spline is
broken into many segments.
And then every segment
there is a point created
and of a line drawn,
and the line is called the vector.
and that vector represents
the direction of the tool.
So as the tool goes around here,
it will follow these direction vectors.
Here we are actually using our two point,
tool axis control
we have a point somewhere in the middle
and we told Mastercam to point
the tool towards that point
as it builds strings around this
outside edge of the surface.
So the first step,
now this is in a textbook of
how to create this toolpath.
What's not in the textbook is this.
First you have to figure out
which machine you're gonna put it on.
You might have multiple
machines in your shop.
And then say selected this machine
where should this part sit on the table?
We know that we cannot
really put it on the table
because we wanna trim it all around.
So there is not enough room.
We know that it has to be
above the table somewhere.
So you will make a decision
and on a really educated guests,
you say, "why you gotta
lift it so far up?"
So the next point is clear the toolpath,
and then look at these
toolpath to make a decision
do you like this toolpath?
Toolpath see path oscillates up
and down using the fluid of the tool
whereas so the tool is
not leaning in one point,
you can look at this
from all different angles
and say, "I like this toolpath,
this does exactly what I want it to do."
Next, you would go to
run machine simulation,
and something can do in simulation
is levitate the part
that you couldn't do in a real machine
without having to design,
and make a fixture.
So let's see how this motion
looks like on simulation.
Same toolpath, red is
bad this is a collision.
Is this a programming error?
Again, you have to make a decision here,
how to fix that?
One way to fix
that is if we could just move this part
further out from the center of the table
and hope that will avoid collision.
Now you can even make a fixture,
maybe this is a little bit premature,
but say we made a fixture,
move the part out,
look at the simulation,
faintal but still no collision,
but we are getting very
close to machine limits.
So, that's not advisable.
You wanna stay in a machine
envelope, working envelope,
but luckily we made this fixture
so you can adjust the head on the fixture.
So we rotated the part up
and when you run these toolpaths,
there is no collisions.
we are closer to the work area,
but is this the most accurate way
you could cut it on this machine?
Again, it's your decision here.
This fixture was prematurely designed.
It doesn't need to be this high.
It could be way lower
that head to be much closer to the center
of rotary of the table.
It would cause less motion
and the part would be more accurate.
So there is always better way.
Now here's some concepts
that you should follow
when you're programming 5-axis machines.
- [Announcer] Hey Karlo, we
have a quick question for you.
Are there any other
benefits of oscillating
than just using the whole
tool more efficiently?
- [Karlo] Yes, depending on
the material you're cutting,
if it's some porous material
or some hard materials,
your tool would be notching in one spot.
It would be varying in
one spot all the time
Oscillating the tool up and down moves,
that cutting pressure away from
just one spot on your fluid.
So your tool actually
will last much longer
and you will get better
surface finish as a result
because you're not varying it too loud.
Hope that helps,
answer the question.
So the things that you should consider
when you're programming multiaxis machines
is use toolpath visualization tool.
Did you notice that's what we did so far?
We ran simulation just to,
talk about the concepts.
Now, these visualization tools
the first one is backlog,
then you have verify,
and then you have machine simulation.
Use your brakes,
that means when you're
doing indexing work,
say the, you're attacking the
part from different angles,
you always rotate the part,
lock your brakes,
your rotary brakes,
and machine the part.
This is the rigid state of the machine.
Then unlock the brakes,
rotate to the new angle,
lock the brakes,
machine from there.
So if you can do most of
your roughing like that,
it will be more accurate
because the machine is
not in the loose mode
with the brakes off,
it's in a rigid mode with the brakes on.
And minimizing machine motion is a big one
because a lot of people new
to multiaxis get all excited
and they have a multiaxis machine
and they can move it all around,
this looks very impressive,
but actually minimizing
motion should be a goal.
Well, let's just talk about
that for a little bit here.
If you had only a 3-axis machine
and you wanted to cut a circle,
you know that 3-axis machine
cannot cut a circle, right?
It's a, we do linear interpolation,
meaning we're moving X
and Y simultaneously like this.
And every 90 degree our
axis has to reverse.
So, if you on the machine
control there is a parameter
where you can set the circle
or tolerance of the cut you wish to make.
If you set that tolerance real tight
your feed rate will be
dropped on the machine.
You're won't be achieving
whatever feed rate
you are programming.
Now, if you have a
4-axis or 5-axis machine,
you can cut that same part this way.
This is less motion than this.
And here we are only limited
by the accuracy of the
bearing on this machine.
Here is our example of how that would work
Here is a linearized motion.
And here it is rotating, forcing rotary.
Now this, some machines
have this abilities,
some machines, you can
set this in a controller.
The machines that don't have the ability,
we can set that in Mastercam,
In Mastercam and we can
adjust the post-processor
to help with this kind of motion.
Another example is,
here, we actually use this
example to calibrate machines.
If you look at this rotary here,
and cut this part,
which one do you think it's more accurate?
Obviously this one will be
more accurate than this one.
The one on the left does all this motion.
One on the right,
the part is sitting in the center.
So, the closer you can put your part
to the center of the rotary,
the more accurate your cut is going to be.
Now, this is not always possible,
but this is some of the considerations
that are not in the textbooks
that you should considering.
This is a real life
example from a customer.
A customer sent me a toolpath
and sent me these pictures.
Toolpath looks like this,
is finishing, his is a knee joint.
And he said,
"okay, I wanna make a fixture
and here is a fixture I made.
I wanna use this dual
rotary device to cut this,
can you give me some feedback?"
So I looked at the toolpath
and obviously the toolpath looks okay,
but it's not efficient,
needs some cleaning up.
But that was,
that's an easy part.
I sent him back the simulation,
I didn't have a model of his fixture.
So I just put the part
where his fixture put it
and this is the motion you get.
You get all kinds of lapping
reversing along the part.
And then I put a rotated the part,
and I sent him this simulation animation
and said, "okay, using that same toolpath,
if you turn this part 90 degrees,
same motion exactly,
this is your motion,
way less motion on the machine."
So this is much more efficient.
And again, this is a non,
not in a textbook example.
And then he had ended up
making this new fixture,
and this is how he ended
up cutting the part.
And if you look at these two fixtures,
this one and this one,
this one is not any harder
to make than this one.
But this one here was
a waste of an effort.
Thinking that fixture before,
thinking about the motion on the machine.
Now we have the signature parts project.
I mean, all our signature
parts are delivered,
with multiple step-by-step demonstrations.
They came to use as training
to buy our Mastercam community
or demonstration tools.
They come with a detailed demonstration
of how we created the toolpath.
By the way,
this toolpaths that I was
showing you on the beginning
is the same green core method
we created this blue
surfaces inside the shade
that we wanted to cut,
and we told Mastercam to cut that shape,
just parallel cut, spiral down,
but compensate the tool to
the actual outside surfaces.
And this is what that looks
like in the interface.
Now we have a very detailed
presentation on this,
on the YouTube,
part of our signature part project,
where we give you the files,
we give you a PowerPoint
exactly step by step.
This is how you create a
toolpath for the whole project.
And we had probably around
50 of them already online.
So if you go to this YouTube video,
you will see Ian presenting
this step-by-steps.
Roughing with a Multiaxis Saw,
and he starts from the very beginning.
I'm not playing a sound here.
I just gonna jump ahead
just to show you how this was created.
So we just created an
insight toolpath, jump ahead
Ian does the explanation
on every detail here
and then, we cut this somewhere here.
This is a toolpath we actually generated.
The next step is to
actually add the surfaces,
these surfaces and now we
are avoiding those surfaces.
And then there is this problem
if we went down straight,
there would be a collision.
So to avoid that collision,
we make some changes.
We change the gradual tilting
angle by 10 degrees, I think.
Yes, and that gives us a motion
that will avoid the collision
with the part, like that.
And on the very end,
you run simulation before
you commit to the machine.
So this is like a five
minute detailed presentation
that you can watch on online.
The next step is to cut that
part on something like this.
Like this customer is cutting stone.
This is a 40 inch saw blade.
40 inch one meter for a metric people.
And they have different challenges, right?
They have, see fixturing
is not so much of a problem
because gravity helps you.
As you know you cannot bend stones
so you have to cut it like this,
and they can cut all kinds
of different shapes using
that saw blade
with a 5-axis head.
This is another example of a
similar machine cutting this,
looks like a big tub out of stone.
And again, here we are
doing using a saw blade,
yet changing the angle of our cut
because the saw blade,
if it stayed in this orientation,
it wouldn't fit on the
bottom of that half sphere.
So we actually have to tilt the angle
of the saw as we are going
down into the the bowl.
Okay, so programming 5-axis machine
is all about dynamic thinking,
mixed with a preoccupation
of avoiding collisions
while keeping the machine
in its work envelope.
Machine limitations are always a reality.
Here is an example of something
we call singularity housing axis reversal
of evant and even crash.
Many of these issues
can be sold very simply
with some experimentation.
Let me just show you the motion.
Right there we did a reversal.
then we doing a rewind
and continue cutting.
What we wanna do is just do this.
Now this is again,
not in a textbook how to fix this,
but it's a very simple fix.
Here are some other limitations.
There's a, we are doing
some debearing on this part
with four or 5-axis motion.
There's a lot of motion going
on here to do that reverse,
and here we go with
annotating more simpler.
There is, machine limitations
are always an issue
with something like this.
We call the singularity
when you have a motion
you just cutting along,
and that is the reversal
and then a rewind over here.
That's not what we want,
that's usually before
because of the singularity,
this is what we want.
We wanna smooth motion.
This is a very easy to fix,
but it's not one of those things
that you can find in the textbook.
The next example was doing a,
the building motion on a 5-axis machine
with excess in motion here.
This is way too much
motion too for the dibber,
which would not be
possible with a 5-axis head
that is annotating head.
So we simplify that motion
and just kept it 4-axis.
This customer is actually
cutting a lens for NASA,
this is not cutting this is
actually a polishing wheel,
and it's like a little belt center
that he's using to cut.
So this is a similar programming method
using the same kind of
tool access control method
as we use for this saw
the message of this whole
presentation is to encourage you
to think outside the box, experiment.
