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Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Transcript
00:02
Create three access tool paths.
00:05
After completing this video, you'll be able to
00:07
create three axis roughing tool paths and three axis finishing tool paths
00:13
in fusion. Let's get started with the supply data set. CM three X tool pass mm dot F 3D.
00:19
This already contains a setup but notice in this case
00:22
that we have a couple of pieces of a vice.
00:25
If we take a look at our setup, you'll note that in the fixture section,
00:29
we've got six bodies selected.
00:31
This is going to be the fixed jaws
00:33
and the movable jaws on the vice as well as the parallels that hold up our stock.
00:38
Now, that's important.
00:39
Whenever we're using fixtures inside of our fusion setups,
00:42
we want to make sure that we do select those as fixtures.
00:45
This means they'll be excluded from the stock.
00:47
They won't show material being removed during the machining process,
00:51
but they will be available for collision checking in some cases.
00:54
So let's go ahead and start to talk about three axis tool paths.
00:58
We've already explored two axis tool paths.
01:00
And one of the main differences between two and three axis tool paths
01:04
is the fact that 3D or three axis tool paths are model aware.
01:08
This means we're not generally selecting edges, pockets or contours,
01:13
but it's actually looking at the geometry.
01:15
The first thing that we want to do when we have a part is
01:17
we want to create roughing tool paths to remove the majority of our material.
01:22
This is going to be done. In this case with an adaptive clearing,
01:25
we're going to select our tool.
01:28
In this case,
01:29
it's gonna be our 12 millimeter flat end mill and we'll
01:31
select aluminum roughing for our cutting data and select the tool.
01:36
Next in our geometry selection,
01:38
we've got a machining boundary
01:40
defined stock by
01:42
and a couple of other options here.
01:44
Now I mentioned that 3D tool paths are model aware.
01:47
Now, by default,
01:48
it's going to be looking at our stock size and
01:51
it's gonna want an area in which it can machine.
01:54
One of the main things that we have to be aware of is making sure that the depth of
01:58
our cuts do not go into our vice and making
02:01
sure it knows exactly where it needs the machine.
02:03
We can select a machining boundary. Currently, we have none selected,
02:07
we can use the bounding box, a silhouette or a selection.
02:11
If we wanted to focus on a specific area,
02:13
we would want to use either a bounding box created by a two D sketch or selected edges,
02:18
the silhouette of our part or a specific selection.
02:22
If we try to simply select, OK. With none,
02:25
it's gonna automatically go in and take a look at
02:27
the entire part as the basis for its tool path.
02:31
You'll notice that in this case,
02:33
it does a good job of removing material from the outside of our part.
02:36
And as we rotate around,
02:37
we can see that it's also removed material
02:39
from the inside without traveling too low.
02:42
However, we should be careful in noting the fact that in this case,
02:47
the stock is exactly the same outside size as our part.
02:50
If the stock was larger, it would go all the way to the bottom.
02:55
So it's always a good idea, even if we're not required to, to set up our heights.
02:60
Instead of using model bottom, I'm gonna use a selection as the top of the vice
03:05
and include a positive offset value.
03:07
In this case, one millimeter to ensure that the tool never goes down that far.
03:12
This will allow us to machine
03:13
everything efficiently using our 3D adaptive clearing
03:16
and not worry about the tool ever going down far enough to hit our vice.
03:21
Now that we've removed the material, I'm going to go into my tool
03:25
visibility and turn that off because it makes it much more difficult for us to see.
03:29
The next thing that we want to do is finish off this inside pocket.
03:32
Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be done with a 3D tool path.
03:36
We can always come back with a two D tool path such as a two D pocket,
03:40
we're gonna select two D pocket using the same tool
03:43
and the geometry is gonna be this inside pocket
03:46
under our passes, make sure that we're not leaving any material behind.
03:50
And we're gonna say, OK,
03:52
the tool enter, it'll go in and remove the material efficiently and then exit.
03:57
You can see here it does a large helical entry,
03:60
which is something that takes quite a bit of time
04:03
because we know that most of the material has already been removed.
04:07
We could also speed this process up by allowing it to start quite a bit lower.
04:12
It's something that you wanna make sure you leave for more advanced
04:15
users to make sure that you understand where the tool is gonna start
04:19
in the height section
04:21
instead of our feet, height being from the top
04:23
and the top height being our stock top, we can move these down quite a bit.
04:28
I'm gonna use my selection process to set that a bit lower, say OK,
04:32
and note that our helo
04:33
ramp is starting quite a bit closer to our part.
04:36
This is gonna save quite a bit of time because we know
04:39
that the tool is not spending a lot of time doing that helo
04:42
entry while not cutting material.
04:44
Once again,
04:45
this is something that you should leave once you're comfortable with the tool pass
04:48
and understanding where the tool is starting to speed up and slow down.
04:52
Now that we've roughed the part completely and finished the inside pocket.
04:56
Let's focus on some 3d tool paths that we can use to generate these final surfaces.
05:02
There are many different 3D options and playing
05:04
around with all of them is extremely important.
05:07
But we're going to focus on three specific tool paths, flow parallel and scallop.
05:12
You will note that some of these tool paths may have a different icon next to them.
05:16
This tells you that they're in the extension.
05:19
Now, the machining extension gives you extra access to multi
05:22
access tool paths
05:23
to give you some extra options inside of these
05:29
as well as some modification tools such as trimming tool paths,
05:32
the leading passes replacing tools and even moving the entry position,
05:36
we're gonna focus on only tool paths that are available to all users.
05:40
So let's get started by first taking a look at flow. A
05:43
flow is a tool path that allows us to select a
05:46
specific face and dictate the UV directions of the cut.
05:50
First, let's select an appropriate tool.
05:52
In this case, tool number two, our 12 millimeter ball end mill.
05:57
We're gonna use aluminum finishing and select our tool
06:01
for our geometry. We're gonna focus on a drive surface.
06:05
And for this example, we'll simply select this one surface
06:08
next, we're gonna move on to passes,
06:11
the passes for a flow tool path are dictated by UV directions.
06:16
This means that it's essentially a coordinate system that's wrapped to our surface
06:20
along U or along V is gonna be dictated by the geometry selection.
06:25
In most cases,
06:26
what we're going to see is the U direction is going to be going along the lengthwise.
06:30
In this case, our X direction
06:32
and the V direction will be in the Y orientation
06:36
in our passes section.
06:37
A flow tool path is dictated by the step over value and the cuss pipe
06:42
because we're using a 12 millimeter diameter tool.
06:45
This is gonna be much too large of a step over to get a good surface finish.
06:50
I'm gonna set it smaller at something like one millimeter
06:52
which leaves a much smaller cusp pipe of 0.04.
06:57
The cusp is the small ridge that's left between the passes of our rounded tool.
07:02
To get a smooth finish, you would have to have an extremely small step over value.
07:06
But for our purposes, we're gonna select OK, leaving it at one,
07:10
the tool moves back and forth and using F seven on the keyboard,
07:14
we're going to hide the tool pa traces
07:16
and just focus on the results.
07:18
Now, overall that looks pretty good.
07:20
You can see some material was left behind and that's a remnant
07:23
of our pocket tool path because of where the cutting tool is.
07:27
So we need to make sure that we fix that.
07:28
And we're going to go into our pocket tool path real quick,
07:31
go to our passes section and we'll do multiple depths.
07:35
We'll allow it to do a roughing depth of six millimeters and say, OK.
07:40
And this will allow it to do multiple passes,
07:42
hitting seven will turn on our tool path.
07:45
And you can see here that it's not working
07:48
because we're using that much lower entry point.
07:51
So we'll make one more change
07:52
going back to our heights.
07:54
And in this case, we're gonna set this from our top of stock
07:59
say OK,
08:00
and allow it to create those cuts.
08:02
So now you can see that it's machining at multiple heights, creating those cuts.
08:06
And the flow tool path now leaves a smooth edge on the outside of our part.
08:11
So flow seems like a pretty good solution to this.
08:15
However, if we go back and edit our flow tool path
08:18
and we select additional faces,
08:20
what you're going to find is that the flow tool path oftentime has a
08:23
little bit more trouble when we start to bridge or go across multiple edges.
08:28
In
08:28
this case, it looks like it's gonna do a pretty good job,
08:31
but let's explore some other tool paths
08:33
for right now, I'm going to right click and suppress the flow tool path,
08:37
which means that it'll be excluded from our tool paths.
08:40
Next, we'll go into 3D and select parallel
08:44
with parallel. Let's make the same selections that we had for flow.
08:47
You'll notice that it's not allowing us to select multiple faces. In
08:50
this case, the parallel is only gonna work on a single face.
08:54
The step over is gonna be set at one millimeter just like it was for the flow tool path.
08:59
And we'll say, OK,
09:00
now the parallel is going back and forth
09:03
and it appears to be doing the entire model.
09:06
A part of the reason for that is based on the geometry settings for this tool path.
09:10
Now, we can't allow it to do the entire model if we wish.
09:14
However,
09:14
there's really no reason that the tool needs to drop into these areas of our pocket.
09:19
In order to take care of that problem, we go back to our geometry
09:23
and in this case, we use avoid machine surfaces.
09:26
In this case, we've got a void and we've got machine,
09:30
we're gonna use a void and select all of these inside faces of our pocket,
09:34
making sure that the tool does not drop into these areas.
09:38
And for good measure, we'll select that bottom face as well.
09:41
Let's go ahead and say, OK, and allow it to rebuild the tool path.
09:45
Now,
09:45
you can see it's only focused on those outside surfaces and it's not dropping in,
09:49
we'll hit F seven to temporarily hide the tool path
09:52
and we can see the results look pretty good.
09:56
Getting a better surface finish.
09:58
In this case is gonna come down to dealing with the step over amount.
10:02
You will notice it's not extending past the edge of the surface here.
10:05
And that's something that we would need to take care of.
10:08
But let's go ahead and let's temporarily suppress this tool path
10:11
and let's focus on one more common option.
10:14
And that's gonna be our scallop tool path.
10:17
A scallop tool path is generally a very good tool
10:20
path that can be used for dealing with complex surfaces.
10:23
Once again, we're going to use the avoid machine surfaces.
10:26
We're gonna select all the insides of this pocket
10:29
just like we did for our parallel tool path.
10:33
We're going to go to our passes section
10:35
and we can see our step over value is currently 0.49.
10:39
We're gonna set that at one millimeter just like we did with all the other tool paths
10:43
and we'll hit F seven to show the tool path.
10:46
And in this case,
10:47
you can see instead of the parallel direction
10:50
that we saw with both flow and parallel,
10:52
you can see it's able to change directions based on the selected surfaces.
10:57
This is one big difference that we see with scallop
10:60
as opposed to tool path like flow and parallel.
11:03
The flow tool path is driven by the UV directions again,
11:06
roughly X and Y along the contour of our surface and parallel is the same thing.
11:12
However, the scallop tool path can better conform to those surface changes.
11:17
When we take a look at this from the side, you can see that we still have that small lip.
11:21
And these are options that we can do inside of our scallop tool path
11:24
we can play around with some of the settings such as allowing it to
11:27
contact the point boundary and having an
11:30
additional offset of a couple millimeters.
11:32
This will allow the tool to extend past those edges,
11:35
creating a much more complete surface.
11:38
However, you will notice that when we do that,
11:40
it tries to machine the entire outside shape.
11:43
This means that we need to go back,
11:46
make some adjustments to the avoid cut
11:49
and select our outside surfaces as well.
11:52
And we also need to prevent the depth of the cut.
11:55
We would need to make sure that it doesn't go
11:56
down too far and begin cutting into our vice.
11:60
But with a couple of changes to the settings,
12:02
we are able to get a final tool path that will allow us to create a nice smooth surface.
12:07
Now, at this point, it's always a good idea to play around with multiple options,
12:11
see how they conform to your selected surfaces before you make that final decision.
12:16
For our example,
12:17
let's go ahead and leave flow and parallel suppressed
12:20
and let's save this before we move on.
Video transcript
00:02
Create three access tool paths.
00:05
After completing this video, you'll be able to
00:07
create three axis roughing tool paths and three axis finishing tool paths
00:13
in fusion. Let's get started with the supply data set. CM three X tool pass mm dot F 3D.
00:19
This already contains a setup but notice in this case
00:22
that we have a couple of pieces of a vice.
00:25
If we take a look at our setup, you'll note that in the fixture section,
00:29
we've got six bodies selected.
00:31
This is going to be the fixed jaws
00:33
and the movable jaws on the vice as well as the parallels that hold up our stock.
00:38
Now, that's important.
00:39
Whenever we're using fixtures inside of our fusion setups,
00:42
we want to make sure that we do select those as fixtures.
00:45
This means they'll be excluded from the stock.
00:47
They won't show material being removed during the machining process,
00:51
but they will be available for collision checking in some cases.
00:54
So let's go ahead and start to talk about three axis tool paths.
00:58
We've already explored two axis tool paths.
01:00
And one of the main differences between two and three axis tool paths
01:04
is the fact that 3D or three axis tool paths are model aware.
01:08
This means we're not generally selecting edges, pockets or contours,
01:13
but it's actually looking at the geometry.
01:15
The first thing that we want to do when we have a part is
01:17
we want to create roughing tool paths to remove the majority of our material.
01:22
This is going to be done. In this case with an adaptive clearing,
01:25
we're going to select our tool.
01:28
In this case,
01:29
it's gonna be our 12 millimeter flat end mill and we'll
01:31
select aluminum roughing for our cutting data and select the tool.
01:36
Next in our geometry selection,
01:38
we've got a machining boundary
01:40
defined stock by
01:42
and a couple of other options here.
01:44
Now I mentioned that 3D tool paths are model aware.
01:47
Now, by default,
01:48
it's going to be looking at our stock size and
01:51
it's gonna want an area in which it can machine.
01:54
One of the main things that we have to be aware of is making sure that the depth of
01:58
our cuts do not go into our vice and making
02:01
sure it knows exactly where it needs the machine.
02:03
We can select a machining boundary. Currently, we have none selected,
02:07
we can use the bounding box, a silhouette or a selection.
02:11
If we wanted to focus on a specific area,
02:13
we would want to use either a bounding box created by a two D sketch or selected edges,
02:18
the silhouette of our part or a specific selection.
02:22
If we try to simply select, OK. With none,
02:25
it's gonna automatically go in and take a look at
02:27
the entire part as the basis for its tool path.
02:31
You'll notice that in this case,
02:33
it does a good job of removing material from the outside of our part.
02:36
And as we rotate around,
02:37
we can see that it's also removed material
02:39
from the inside without traveling too low.
02:42
However, we should be careful in noting the fact that in this case,
02:47
the stock is exactly the same outside size as our part.
02:50
If the stock was larger, it would go all the way to the bottom.
02:55
So it's always a good idea, even if we're not required to, to set up our heights.
02:60
Instead of using model bottom, I'm gonna use a selection as the top of the vice
03:05
and include a positive offset value.
03:07
In this case, one millimeter to ensure that the tool never goes down that far.
03:12
This will allow us to machine
03:13
everything efficiently using our 3D adaptive clearing
03:16
and not worry about the tool ever going down far enough to hit our vice.
03:21
Now that we've removed the material, I'm going to go into my tool
03:25
visibility and turn that off because it makes it much more difficult for us to see.
03:29
The next thing that we want to do is finish off this inside pocket.
03:32
Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be done with a 3D tool path.
03:36
We can always come back with a two D tool path such as a two D pocket,
03:40
we're gonna select two D pocket using the same tool
03:43
and the geometry is gonna be this inside pocket
03:46
under our passes, make sure that we're not leaving any material behind.
03:50
And we're gonna say, OK,
03:52
the tool enter, it'll go in and remove the material efficiently and then exit.
03:57
You can see here it does a large helical entry,
03:60
which is something that takes quite a bit of time
04:03
because we know that most of the material has already been removed.
04:07
We could also speed this process up by allowing it to start quite a bit lower.
04:12
It's something that you wanna make sure you leave for more advanced
04:15
users to make sure that you understand where the tool is gonna start
04:19
in the height section
04:21
instead of our feet, height being from the top
04:23
and the top height being our stock top, we can move these down quite a bit.
04:28
I'm gonna use my selection process to set that a bit lower, say OK,
04:32
and note that our helo
04:33
ramp is starting quite a bit closer to our part.
04:36
This is gonna save quite a bit of time because we know
04:39
that the tool is not spending a lot of time doing that helo
04:42
entry while not cutting material.
04:44
Once again,
04:45
this is something that you should leave once you're comfortable with the tool pass
04:48
and understanding where the tool is starting to speed up and slow down.
04:52
Now that we've roughed the part completely and finished the inside pocket.
04:56
Let's focus on some 3d tool paths that we can use to generate these final surfaces.
05:02
There are many different 3D options and playing
05:04
around with all of them is extremely important.
05:07
But we're going to focus on three specific tool paths, flow parallel and scallop.
05:12
You will note that some of these tool paths may have a different icon next to them.
05:16
This tells you that they're in the extension.
05:19
Now, the machining extension gives you extra access to multi
05:22
access tool paths
05:23
to give you some extra options inside of these
05:29
as well as some modification tools such as trimming tool paths,
05:32
the leading passes replacing tools and even moving the entry position,
05:36
we're gonna focus on only tool paths that are available to all users.
05:40
So let's get started by first taking a look at flow. A
05:43
flow is a tool path that allows us to select a
05:46
specific face and dictate the UV directions of the cut.
05:50
First, let's select an appropriate tool.
05:52
In this case, tool number two, our 12 millimeter ball end mill.
05:57
We're gonna use aluminum finishing and select our tool
06:01
for our geometry. We're gonna focus on a drive surface.
06:05
And for this example, we'll simply select this one surface
06:08
next, we're gonna move on to passes,
06:11
the passes for a flow tool path are dictated by UV directions.
06:16
This means that it's essentially a coordinate system that's wrapped to our surface
06:20
along U or along V is gonna be dictated by the geometry selection.
06:25
In most cases,
06:26
what we're going to see is the U direction is going to be going along the lengthwise.
06:30
In this case, our X direction
06:32
and the V direction will be in the Y orientation
06:36
in our passes section.
06:37
A flow tool path is dictated by the step over value and the cuss pipe
06:42
because we're using a 12 millimeter diameter tool.
06:45
This is gonna be much too large of a step over to get a good surface finish.
06:50
I'm gonna set it smaller at something like one millimeter
06:52
which leaves a much smaller cusp pipe of 0.04.
06:57
The cusp is the small ridge that's left between the passes of our rounded tool.
07:02
To get a smooth finish, you would have to have an extremely small step over value.
07:06
But for our purposes, we're gonna select OK, leaving it at one,
07:10
the tool moves back and forth and using F seven on the keyboard,
07:14
we're going to hide the tool pa traces
07:16
and just focus on the results.
07:18
Now, overall that looks pretty good.
07:20
You can see some material was left behind and that's a remnant
07:23
of our pocket tool path because of where the cutting tool is.
07:27
So we need to make sure that we fix that.
07:28
And we're going to go into our pocket tool path real quick,
07:31
go to our passes section and we'll do multiple depths.
07:35
We'll allow it to do a roughing depth of six millimeters and say, OK.
07:40
And this will allow it to do multiple passes,
07:42
hitting seven will turn on our tool path.
07:45
And you can see here that it's not working
07:48
because we're using that much lower entry point.
07:51
So we'll make one more change
07:52
going back to our heights.
07:54
And in this case, we're gonna set this from our top of stock
07:59
say OK,
08:00
and allow it to create those cuts.
08:02
So now you can see that it's machining at multiple heights, creating those cuts.
08:06
And the flow tool path now leaves a smooth edge on the outside of our part.
08:11
So flow seems like a pretty good solution to this.
08:15
However, if we go back and edit our flow tool path
08:18
and we select additional faces,
08:20
what you're going to find is that the flow tool path oftentime has a
08:23
little bit more trouble when we start to bridge or go across multiple edges.
08:28
In
08:28
this case, it looks like it's gonna do a pretty good job,
08:31
but let's explore some other tool paths
08:33
for right now, I'm going to right click and suppress the flow tool path,
08:37
which means that it'll be excluded from our tool paths.
08:40
Next, we'll go into 3D and select parallel
08:44
with parallel. Let's make the same selections that we had for flow.
08:47
You'll notice that it's not allowing us to select multiple faces. In
08:50
this case, the parallel is only gonna work on a single face.
08:54
The step over is gonna be set at one millimeter just like it was for the flow tool path.
08:59
And we'll say, OK,
09:00
now the parallel is going back and forth
09:03
and it appears to be doing the entire model.
09:06
A part of the reason for that is based on the geometry settings for this tool path.
09:10
Now, we can't allow it to do the entire model if we wish.
09:14
However,
09:14
there's really no reason that the tool needs to drop into these areas of our pocket.
09:19
In order to take care of that problem, we go back to our geometry
09:23
and in this case, we use avoid machine surfaces.
09:26
In this case, we've got a void and we've got machine,
09:30
we're gonna use a void and select all of these inside faces of our pocket,
09:34
making sure that the tool does not drop into these areas.
09:38
And for good measure, we'll select that bottom face as well.
09:41
Let's go ahead and say, OK, and allow it to rebuild the tool path.
09:45
Now,
09:45
you can see it's only focused on those outside surfaces and it's not dropping in,
09:49
we'll hit F seven to temporarily hide the tool path
09:52
and we can see the results look pretty good.
09:56
Getting a better surface finish.
09:58
In this case is gonna come down to dealing with the step over amount.
10:02
You will notice it's not extending past the edge of the surface here.
10:05
And that's something that we would need to take care of.
10:08
But let's go ahead and let's temporarily suppress this tool path
10:11
and let's focus on one more common option.
10:14
And that's gonna be our scallop tool path.
10:17
A scallop tool path is generally a very good tool
10:20
path that can be used for dealing with complex surfaces.
10:23
Once again, we're going to use the avoid machine surfaces.
10:26
We're gonna select all the insides of this pocket
10:29
just like we did for our parallel tool path.
10:33
We're going to go to our passes section
10:35
and we can see our step over value is currently 0.49.
10:39
We're gonna set that at one millimeter just like we did with all the other tool paths
10:43
and we'll hit F seven to show the tool path.
10:46
And in this case,
10:47
you can see instead of the parallel direction
10:50
that we saw with both flow and parallel,
10:52
you can see it's able to change directions based on the selected surfaces.
10:57
This is one big difference that we see with scallop
10:60
as opposed to tool path like flow and parallel.
11:03
The flow tool path is driven by the UV directions again,
11:06
roughly X and Y along the contour of our surface and parallel is the same thing.
11:12
However, the scallop tool path can better conform to those surface changes.
11:17
When we take a look at this from the side, you can see that we still have that small lip.
11:21
And these are options that we can do inside of our scallop tool path
11:24
we can play around with some of the settings such as allowing it to
11:27
contact the point boundary and having an
11:30
additional offset of a couple millimeters.
11:32
This will allow the tool to extend past those edges,
11:35
creating a much more complete surface.
11:38
However, you will notice that when we do that,
11:40
it tries to machine the entire outside shape.
11:43
This means that we need to go back,
11:46
make some adjustments to the avoid cut
11:49
and select our outside surfaces as well.
11:52
And we also need to prevent the depth of the cut.
11:55
We would need to make sure that it doesn't go
11:56
down too far and begin cutting into our vice.
11:60
But with a couple of changes to the settings,
12:02
we are able to get a final tool path that will allow us to create a nice smooth surface.
12:07
Now, at this point, it's always a good idea to play around with multiple options,
12:11
see how they conform to your selected surfaces before you make that final decision.
12:16
For our example,
12:17
let's go ahead and leave flow and parallel suppressed
12:20
and let's save this before we move on.
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