Toolpaths: Spiral Barley Twist

00:19:56:08 – 00:20:16:10
Speaker 1
Hey, hey, welcome back to another training video. My name is Chris. And today we’re going to be focusing on Conversational Cam Pro, specifically on a toolpath called Spiral Barley Twist. Now we’re going to be answering two specific questions pertaining to this toolpath. The first is what is this toolpath like.

00:20:16:10 – 00:20:33:26
Speaker 1
What does it do K how does the cutter actually go through the material. And what are the final results of this tool pass. So it can help visualize what this is going to accomplish. The second question we’re going to answer is how do we program for it. So we’re going to use two resources to help visualize this and connect all the dots.

00:20:33:26 – 00:20:52:05
Speaker 1
And the first is going to be our aspire software, which is going to be using the 2D drawings to lay out the design. And then we’ll do the final toolpath in programing here in Cam Pro, the other resource will be towards the end of the video, where we’re going to show the actual cutting results on the CNC machine.

00:20:52:05 – 00:21:02:14
Speaker 1
So you can see the actual toolpath taking place on the material and again helps solidify what this process does. So let’s jump over to our aspire software

00:21:02:14 – 00:21:07:21
Speaker 1
So here we’ve already created a spindle that has a square section a square section.

00:21:07:21 – 00:21:10:18
Speaker 1
And in the middle here all this is going to be round

00:21:10:18 – 00:21:28:19
Speaker 1
For example, the surfacing cutter already has been programed to turn starting from this point, and it’s going to turn all the way down to getting to this point. Turning that to a solid diameter of 2.5in like we’ve done in the other videos to finish, the other two details, these are the tool profiles.

00:21:28:21 – 00:21:59:01
Speaker 1
This is using this 2.5in barley twist cutter. And again you can get this from magnate magnate Netcom. And this gives us again those details right there one and two. So both of those two pass the turning round toolpath and the tool profile toolpath. If you haven’t seen those videos I highly recommend it. They’re going to be again, really a necessity for getting into turning applications.

00:21:59:03 – 00:22:24:19
Speaker 1
Today we’re going to be focusing on just the barley twist. So we’re not going to show how to, lay out the programing for those details that have already been done. So a barley twist. What does the cutter due to the material. Well, the cutter is going to, do a very similar thing as the profile is going to start at a, a section diameter, okay, at a surface of a non diameter, in this case 2.5in.

00:22:24:22 – 00:22:51:19
Speaker 1
And it’s going to plunge down until it gets to the depth of the cutter shape that we want to apply. And then it’s going to travel on that cutter down the length of the stock with that shape all the way down as the stock is rotating okay. And that will give us a spiral effect. Now I’ve, I’ve drawn up a little simulation here so you can kind of see what’s going on.

00:22:51:19 – 00:22:57:09
Speaker 1
It’s not required to do this for programing but it helps again visualize what’s going to take place.

00:22:57:09 – 00:23:09:05
Speaker 1
If we were to slap that right in place, we can see that the cutter is going to have to travel down the length of the stock as it’s continually rotating to give us that spiral twist effect.

00:23:09:07 – 00:23:28:07
Speaker 1
Now the one thing I want to point out before we go and start programing, this is what the toolpath does at the beginning and end of the twist itself. So the process, just like I explained, is going to come and it’s it’s going to plunge, but it’s not going to be rotating while plunging like these tool profiles do.

00:23:28:08 – 00:23:47:24
Speaker 1
Okay. Those two profiles, the cutter while it’s plunging the stock is rotating continually. That is not happening when the cutter is plunging into the stock for the, barley twist effect or for any of the spiral twist toolpath, it’s going to plunge while the stock is just stationary, and then it’s going to start rotating as it’s traveling down the length of the stock.

00:23:47:26 – 00:24:11:14
Speaker 1
When it gets to the end, it’s not going to finish rotating to apply that toolpath to the end of the of the twist. It’s just going to lift out of the material. Okay. So that means that it’s going to have these just plunge marks. And where it started and ended. And it’s not going to be a smooth transition from a nice round section into a spiral section, back to a round section.

00:24:11:16 – 00:24:20:13
Speaker 1
So that’s why we implemented these tool profile at the beginning and end of the twist. To give us this transitional effect

00:24:20:13 – 00:24:32:16
Speaker 1
here, you can actually see a sample that I’ve cut that doesn’t have these tool profiles on the end of the barley twist. And you can see again, it’s just not as clean as a transition as if we look at this blank

00:24:32:16 – 00:24:36:01
Speaker 1
that again does have these tool profiles.

00:24:36:03 – 00:24:43:01
Speaker 1
Creating the smooth transition from a round to a spiral back to a round section.

00:24:43:01 – 00:24:55:25
Speaker 1
Okay. So let’s go back to our drawing board here. And we’re going to now create the toolpath here in Cam Pro. And so we’ll go here to see Cam Pro. And we’re going to go to the project that we’ve been using so far for these training videos.

00:24:55:25 – 00:25:21:06
Speaker 1
The training samples. And go to my workstation and the part that’s already been created. And let’s go manage our toolpath. So again the tool paths for the turning round and the tool profiles have already been laid out and they’ve already been cut on the CNC machine. All we’re focusing on today is just the barley twist factor. So if we go to our spiral tool paths and we have a few of them, the first one we’re going to be focusing on today is the barley twist.

00:25:21:08 – 00:25:42:09
Speaker 1
So if we add this it’s going to add it to our toolpath list. We can close our toolpath manager. And there we have our toolpath that we can go now manage or should we say program. So if we click in the barley twist and to go to this questionnaire process, let’s start filling out this, this information and going back to our drawing board to get the information that we need.

00:25:42:11 – 00:26:02:15
Speaker 1
So the first thing is the tool that we’re going to select. And so if we come over here we’re going to be matching the same diameter of cutter that was on the tool profiles that barley twist 2.5in is what I used on those tool profiles on either end. Now, there’s another reason why I’m using a 2.5in diameter cutter as well.

00:26:02:17 – 00:26:25:18
Speaker 1
Let me go back to our drawing board so you can see this. So what makes a traditional barley twist? An actual barley twist is two things is first, the cutter is the same diameter okay. The width of the cutter, the diameter of the cutter is the same diameter of the turned round stock that the twist is being placed onto.

00:26:25:20 – 00:26:45:10
Speaker 1
Okay, that’s the first criteria that will make this a an actual barley twist process. The second one is how many starts are in the actual spiral twist. And you can actually see back here if we were to select this cutter real quick, the 2.5in, because that’s the one we want to use. And we’re going to make this tool number two.

00:26:45:13 – 00:27:05:00
Speaker 1
So with that cutter selected I’ll just point out what I’m talking about on number of starts. This field right here where it says number of starts is already defaulted to a one start twist. We can have multiple starts. And we’ll show that ability in other videos where we can, modify these other parameters. But this one’s going to do a one start spiral twist.

00:27:05:03 – 00:27:15:19
Speaker 1
And so if we’re matching the diameter of the cutter to the diameter of the stock with that one start spiral, it’s going to program and actual barley twist effect is what we’re looking for.

00:27:15:19 – 00:27:24:18
Speaker 1
So let’s go back in program the actual sequence here. So we need to know the spiral start and end position okay.

00:27:24:25 – 00:27:39:26
Speaker 1
So let’s go back to our drawing. And we can move our tool out of the way. And let’s throw some dimensions out here. So zero is still the left edge of our blank. So we’ll click on x0 as a horizontal dimension

00:27:39:26 – 00:27:55:24
Speaker 1
and then the center of the cutter where the spiral is going to be starting. And that’s going to give us our first dimension, the starting position. And then from x0 to the center of the cutter at the end. And that’s going to give us our ending position. So we have start and end.

00:27:55:26 – 00:28:30:15
Speaker 1
Let’s go plug in those parameters 5.25 and 12.75. So our start position is 5.25 and the ending position is 12.75. Again the rest of these parameters are defaulted. We’re just going to leave them as the default feeds as speeds and parameters. The only thing leftover that we need to fill out is this last question the section diameter. Now, it did mention this before that this entire barley twist process is going to be applied to a diameter section that has already been turned round, and that is a vertical, measurement.

00:28:30:15 – 00:28:54:00
Speaker 1
And the diameter here of 2.5in. Okay. So that’s the section diameter this twist is being applied to. So let’s go back and apply the section diameter of 2.5in. And again in a separate video we’ll show how to modify these other fields to create other types of details. But for now we are done. And we can push finish and save.

00:28:54:02 – 00:29:13:05
Speaker 1
Okay. Now all we have to do is save our G-code. Now the other two toolpath again have already been machined and so I can uncheck the turning round and the tool profiles. We’re just going to do the barley twist today on the existing spindle that’s in the machine right now. So let’s go generate the G-code. And there it is.

00:29:13:12 – 00:29:22:08
Speaker 1
So we got the tool. Number two is our barley twist cutter. And that entire process is going to turn our entire barley twist. We can go save G-code

00:29:22:08 – 00:29:31:02
Speaker 1
We’ll put this under our tool paths under spiral barley. And this isn’t going to be a drawing file.

00:29:31:04 – 00:29:41:12
Speaker 1
It’s exactly the same. I mean, this this is going to be our G-code file. Spiral barley twist G-code and save. And now let’s go to the machine and see what the cutting results are.

00:29:41:14 – 00:29:41:23
Unknown
Kind

00:29:51:08 – 00:30:03:28
Unknown
Up.

00:30:04:00 – 00:30:24:00
Unknown
Up. Up.

00:30:24:00 – 00:30:32:00
Unknown
Up. Up. You.

00:30:32:01 – 00:30:40:07
Unknown
Up. Up.

00:30:40:07 – 00:30:50:05
Speaker 1
Again, we can see how good the transitions look at the beginning and end of the spiral, simply because we added those tool profiles before this Barley Twist process.