Recreating a spindle in CCAM Pro

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:23:09
Speaker 1
Hey, hey. Welcome to another training session. Today we’re going to be actually programing the spindle reproduction. We put a demonstration video out on this, and we’ll bring a photo of it in just a second into the software. But this video is specifically going to be showing how to design and program, the spindle reproduction using Conversational Cam Pro.

00:00:23:12 – 00:00:42:22
Speaker 1
Now this first video is going to be specifically for the Delta controllers. There will be a different video showing how to do this a slightly different way, but using C Cam Pro as well with in tangent with the aspire software like we’re doing here. But for the mark three system. So we’ll have two separate videos for the two different controllers.

00:00:42:29 – 00:01:05:01
Speaker 1
This is slightly different on laying out the designing and programing for those two components. Okay. So today we’re going to start out by just creating a new file. You and the blank. The original blank is going to be 20.75in long. The square ends are actually 2.5in square. Technically we could make the blank oversize a machine and square.

00:01:05:01 – 00:01:28:05
Speaker 1
It was actually what I’m going to show today. But just for, just visual sake, to see if it was already, 2.5in square. It will keep it, at that blink size. And then the thickness is really irrelevant for this situation. We just need to create a 2D drawing. And the cut depth of the material thickness is all going to be changed and converted in conversational cam pro.

00:01:28:07 – 00:01:45:03
Speaker 1
But if we were holding to the best practice, we typically take the width, the y axis width of our blank, and we, take half of that. So it would be inch and a quarter would be our thickness. And then but it is critical to lay out our y position. The z axis doesn’t matter if it’s top or bottom.

00:01:45:03 – 00:02:08:04
Speaker 1
But again, if we were holding to good practices, the bottom would represent technically the center of rotation of a blank in the turning center. That’s why we’re only putting half of the thickness, because if you doubled this up top half, bottom half, it would equal the same as the thickness of the part. Okay, now, we need to change where our XY0 position is.

00:02:08:07 – 00:02:35:27
Speaker 1
There’s, there’s a couple of ways to work around this. One is we could draw the part off center like, for example, if we chose the bottom left corner, the x zero could be here, which is fine, but the y center is here. And in the turning center, the y center is the center rotation. So if we were actually drawing this correctly, we’d have to draw the spindle off the white area, which represents our material, in order to program this correctly.

00:02:35:27 – 00:02:55:02
Speaker 1
But if we want to align things up, to the material surface, like what we see here, then we’re going to use what’s called an offset tool. So we use offset in this situation. The fixture I’m using as a for jaw chuck. So I’m not going be able to put zero on the very end. So I’m going to shift my X forward by one inch.

00:02:55:05 – 00:03:16:04
Speaker 1
And we do the opposite. We go -one inch. And you can see it shifts the edge of the part back -one inch, so that the x zero is now one inch forward on that edge. Okay. The y axis, I need to be in the center of this material. So we’re going to take just this number an inch and a quarter and make half of that.

00:03:16:06 – 00:03:41:06
Speaker 1
And you can see it, pulls the again material down, which aligns the y axis with the center of our blank. So with the offset we’ve now positioned where we want XY0 to be in the turning center, with our metric software. So now if we were going and designing and programing a toolpath, which is what we’re going to do here for the contour turning process, we’ll be able to, make sure it’ll actually come up.

00:03:41:06 – 00:04:11:15
Speaker 1
Correct. When it comes to coordinate positions relative to x and y. So we can push okay. All right. Now let’s let’s take a look at what we’re actually producing. So I’m going to import an image here. Just import a bitmap. This is the spindle reproduction image okay. And we’re just going to scale this up a little bit. And it really doesn’t have to be to scale yet because once we trace it then we’ll be able to align things up and scale it to the right diameters.

00:04:11:17 – 00:04:35:15
Speaker 1
So again, the square sections here are 2.5in square. So we’re going to make the largest diameters here, here, here, you know just the highest diameter points. Those are going to be slightly under 2.5in, probably like two and 3/8, and just an eighth inch undersized on those main areas. But we’ll worry about all that scaling and details of size once we’ve actually traced this design.

00:04:35:18 – 00:04:59:18
Speaker 1
So, the one thing I like to do is you can bring an image in, but it could be skewed, like I want, what I mean by skewed is it could be rotated. So if we grab the rotational tool, you know, if it came in like this. Okay, we have to line it up with the length of the machine or length of this part, as if it’s in the turning center from left to right along the x axis.

00:04:59:21 – 00:05:18:19
Speaker 1
The easiest way to do that is just simply draw some lines. And so if I draw some lines as some references. I can use those references. So if I make sure that if I take the image now and we just bump it up until, you can see here it’s already making contact with that line right there.

00:05:18:21 – 00:05:36:10
Speaker 1
But down here it’s not okay. So it needs to be again rotated. The image needs to be rotated a little bit more so that we’re more lined up. So now if we now we’re doing the opposite. We got a gap here. And but we’re making contact here. So I rotate I just a little bit too much. You can see it does not take a lot.

00:05:36:13 – 00:05:58:10
Speaker 1
And if we’re slightly off that’s okay. We can always make adjustments by just trying to get it relatively close. Along again, a parallel plane along the x axis is all I’m trying to do with the diameters here. Okay, let’s do one final tweak in your favorite assignments. If you could do it to do so. That looks good.

00:05:58:17 – 00:06:17:22
Speaker 1
Okay. Just barely, barely. Okay. So now that we’ve rotated the image, I can get rid of this line. And we can now, run a tracing technique. There are tracing tools in the software, but it’s not going to be able to do it as easy as what I’m about to show you. The simplest method is using our polyline tool.

00:06:17:22 – 00:06:35:15
Speaker 1
And then we’re going to be modifying each of the polyline segments along the length. So we only need to do this with one side. And then we can make adjustments okay. So make sure that again if you accidentally press ESC it will toggle it to a curved segment. Like if I try to draw polygons cuts and straight lines.

00:06:35:19 – 00:06:58:20
Speaker 1
But if I push the letter S on my keyboard and then click save, it tries to do these curves. I don’t want that okay. So I’m going to go control XZ. And I’m going to make sure I push S or the straight lines only. And push escape so that we can start over here. But I’m going to click at the start and stopping points of each transitional point.

00:06:58:20 – 00:07:30:21
Speaker 1
Okay. So for example here, this is here there is a screen. There. Come all the way over here. So it’s straight over here like so and I’m just getting it close. Will come back and make better modifications in a second or. But we’re just clicking on the intersections okay. And again we’ll be able to do that to make our modifications come hell or high.

00:07:30:21 – 00:07:49:13
Speaker 1
But it doesn’t matter what you put between it and the end result. And let’s say right. So we’ll start from there okay? Okay. Now if I push the spacebar it will end the the polylines okay. So we created those intersections. We can close this. And now if we go into the node editing tool. So node editing also hotkey is.

00:07:49:13 – 00:08:10:20
Speaker 1
And on your keyboard we can see those points that we clicked for the beginning and end of each intersection. And all we’re going to do is use our node editing tool to modify these no points and types of lines. So anytime that there’s like a curve like this, I’m usually going to be using an arc. If it fits, unless I’m doing something like this where I was single arc won’t be able to fit this.

00:08:10:20 – 00:08:27:20
Speaker 1
So I’m going to turn that into a bezier line. Whereas over here where these flat surfaces will stay as straight lines. So we’ll be able to, work down this length. So if I want to change this line into an arc, I can right click on the line and say change it to an arc. Or I can also use the hotkey letter a on my keyboard.

00:08:27:22 – 00:08:43:15
Speaker 1
So if I just hover my mouse over this line segment and push the A, it turns it into an arc. And now I can click and drag the center until again it lines up with the image how I want it to be. Same thing here. So we’ll change this to an A, an arc and then bring that in.

00:08:43:15 – 00:09:08:25
Speaker 1
So it’s actually getting close. Now if I, if I need to I can always take the end node, select those and bump it with my arrow keys until it gets exactly where I want it to be. Okay. That makes it really easy to line up starting and ending points. Okay, so this one we’re going to also change it to an arc to bring that up as you know this one again an arc won’t be able to do all of this because it’s not symmetrical.

00:09:08:27 – 00:09:24:02
Speaker 1
So we’re going to change this into a bezier. So if you right click on it’s called to a bezier or the letter B for your hotkey. So if I come in here and use the hotkey letter B on that line, it’s going to take these and make these node points that I can come and control as well.

00:09:24:04 – 00:09:42:09
Speaker 1
So I can click and drag them. But I can also select them by clicking on once. They’ll be highlight kind of that, that darker color, that red color. Then I can use my arrow keys to nudge it instead. So whatever method you like to use, and so you can get these again dialed in as close as you want to be, let’s say, just like that.

00:09:42:14 – 00:10:00:22
Speaker 1
Okay. Perfectly fine. Now, this guy, you can see here that this node is it kind of came up. But if I want that to go down to select it and I just use my arrow keys, bumped it down, that’s perfectly flat there. This guy is fine. If we want that to be straight across, I could come down, like, so.

00:10:00:22 – 00:10:29:00
Speaker 1
So again, it’s straight across. This diameter in this diameter section are the exact same. There’s nothing wrong with that. You get to have a little preference in this on how fine tune you want to make it, but let’s change this segment into an arc. Bring that up to there. Beautiful. And we’ll change this into an arc. So give that a try okay I kind of like so now let’s say if I’m looking at this going, you know this, this has a curved a curved face to it.

00:10:29:00 – 00:10:50:11
Speaker 1
But the top looks like instead of being all the way curved, it has more of a flat diameter section, kind of like this section right at the very top. But I didn’t have a another node pointing here. I can always insert one and make modifications. This is really cool. So I can simply right click on the line and it has me gives me the option to insert a point the hockey letter I for insert.

00:10:50:16 – 00:11:10:00
Speaker 1
So if I just hover my mouse where I want my dot to show up, I can go letter I and oh there you go, letter I and there we go inserts another dot. And so if we change this line here which was originally an arc, we can change it back to a line with the hotkey letter L, which so L.

00:11:10:02 – 00:11:27:21
Speaker 1
And I’m just going to bump this down a little bit up out of the way. So again straight across and there that I think that looks a little bit better cleaner according to the layout of the design. So has the curve and then a straight flat, we’re just going to finish doing this exact same process all the way down.

00:11:27:21 – 00:11:57:05
Speaker 1
And again, if we need to make any adjustments for starting and ending points, we can always do so. Kind of like these guys come. Right. I’m going to have this be an Arc segment and then probably almost like and then probably a like a bezier, but we could do both by just saying make this a bezier curve and I can pull this one up the high to make those predictions.

00:11:57:08 – 00:12:21:10
Speaker 1
So you could and we’ll just make some modifications here. I’m going to save this. Might well we might be able to get it. We might not. Again I’m just going to play with this and see if we can create to the point. Cut off the drawing. Curves okay. So again if it’s not oh actually we’re getting close. Again just playing with the nodes to see if we can create some.

00:12:21:15 – 00:12:39:24
Speaker 1
So again it kind of comes up over here, which I’m not getting with just two notes. So if I can’t get it with just two nodes on a bezier curve, I can insert a point and then I have more adjustment. So if we go insert a point, I’ll say I’m going to put this on the very top of that right there.

00:12:39:26 – 00:13:07:07
Speaker 1
It’s all and then we can dial in that that curve right there. And we can also. Dial in this node and curve as well. Now okay. So that’s looking a lot better just by making inserting that dot. So I have a little bit more control at this. Again at that contour curve. But again you get to go as detailed as you want to be.

00:13:07:13 – 00:13:36:15
Speaker 1
What I use it on my tables. Although I wanted to kind of okay beautiful. And let’s go to this line here. We’re going to make that an arc or I’m going to call that good right there. And that’s straight, straight across. So going becomes beautiful and that’s straight across. And we’ll make this into an arc 1500 and we’ll call that good or almost.

00:13:36:18 – 00:14:01:23
Speaker 1
Now bring this across over here. Something close to that and use our arrow keys. Okay. So again in just a couple minutes, you can easily trace it with a polyline, make corrections to each line. And this is again matching the image that came in. So what we can do is if we turn our image off up here, we can toggle it off.

00:14:01:27 – 00:14:18:04
Speaker 1
And as we can take this and we can just mere copy it. Okay. So if I take this and I mere copy it to the other side, flip vertically. Okay, so there’s my spindle design. You can turn the image back on if you need to check it. Actually, it’s really, really close to the other side as well.

00:14:18:04 – 00:14:35:07
Speaker 1
So we did really well at tilting the image to the to make it again parallel with the x axis, so that when we traced one side and flipped it, it actually lined up with the opposite side as well. So that looks really, really good. So from that point we just need to decide on diameters and we can adjust the scaling okay.

00:14:35:10 – 00:14:56:15
Speaker 1
So this guy if we select these two lines together down here in the very bottom, it says it’s 1.8158in in diameter. Based on this drawing. Now we’re going to draw this, again, not 2.5in in diameter because that’s the square section. We’re going to make an eighth inch under size two and a half. So two and 3/8.

00:14:56:17 – 00:15:23:05
Speaker 1
So if we take these lines and we just go here to set object size seven and make sure everything is linked x, y is linked. And we can change the height to 2.375 apply. And there you go. It’s as easy as it gets okay. So now the maximum diameter sections are at 2.375. And the length automatically scaled with the diameter.

00:15:23:07 – 00:15:44:23
Speaker 1
So we know that this is, this is matching the same design as what the original spindle was. So, from here we can actually draw on some rectangles. If I draw on a rectangle here that so, you know, represents the square section here on the end and this rectangle that represents the square section diameter on this end.

00:15:44:25 – 00:16:06:26
Speaker 1
And we’re getting close. And if you want visuals you could always draw with using your polyline. Just come and click on these and these transitional points. And if you want this isn’t required. It just gives it a little bit more depth for seeing what the results are going to be for the entire spindle. Because again, those those transitional points are going to be around the circumference.

00:16:07:02 – 00:16:33:06
Speaker 1
So you can see again, this looks a little cleaner than just having the top and the bottom profile edges of the spindle. But for programing sake they’re not required. So I’m not going to necessarily necessarily have to have these in. We can always delete them. We can put them in. It’s your choice okay. So from here we have one final detail that we need to, compensate for on our contouring.

00:16:33:08 – 00:16:52:09
Speaker 1
There are many scenarios in which you could use profiles to try to match in some of these areas, but to keep things simple, we’re just going to contour or turn this entire shape using a tapered eighth inch ball cutter. Okay, so it’s going to start from one end contour all the way to the end and be done in one shot.

00:16:52:09 – 00:17:09:16
Speaker 1
So we’ll need to rough out the material using a surfacing cutter to remove all of this square material that would be in here in the center of the blank. And then come back and actually turn the contour. However, the one thing we need to be aware of is in contouring is that the cutter is going to plunge down to wherever the line is.

00:17:09:18 – 00:17:17:10
Speaker 1
So the line is starting here, but there’s material above it. And that’s, that’s why I want to compensate for. So,

00:17:17:16 – 00:17:38:11
Speaker 1
So when we’re using the tapered ball cutter is going to have a three degree edge on those tools that we get, from precise bits, even magnet, they have three degree tapered ball cutters for those eighth inch tips. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to draw a three degree off 90. So 87 degrees, a lead in line.

00:17:38:11 – 00:18:01:04
Speaker 1
So that cutter starts where it’s going to make contact with the material and then work its way down into the part and then start doing the contouring. So if we think about this, this if this section is square, that means it’s swinging bigger than 2.5in in diameter. Okay. We can actually draw a another square section out here and you can see what I’m talking about.

00:18:01:04 – 00:18:19:12
Speaker 1
So if it’s two and a half by two and a half square and then we rotate that, I’m going to use the hotkey number nine to rotate 45 degrees. Rotate it 45 degrees. I can see that this corner up here is going to be swinging way up here. Okay. When it when this is actually rotating okay.

00:18:19:13 – 00:18:47:10
Speaker 1
With so we need to compensate for that. The cutter needs to approach the part way up here instead of down here on this face. So if I draw a line from that point over, I can use that as a reference line. And so if I now, start our three degree, lead in line from where it’s going to eventually end up here on the contour, I’m going to draw a three degree line overlapping up here.

00:18:47:10 – 00:19:16:26
Speaker 1
So you can see next to the mouth that says a 86. I’m going to make it say 87 right there and click. All right. So now if I trim use my scissors tool and trim the excess that line. If I have the cutter start up here where the material is actually swinging and then work its way down with the contouring, and then proceed to do the rest of the contour, I won’t be jamming the tool into the material on accident.

00:19:16:26 – 00:19:39:25
Speaker 1
I’m compensating for, again the material that it has to go through first to get down into the part. Now, a majority of the material over here in the center will be machined away, but that doesn’t that doesn’t remove the corners of the square section from being away. Okay. So we have that’s why we’re drawing these lines. So we’re going to do the same thing on the opposite side.

00:19:39:27 – 00:20:11:16
Speaker 1
If I do not 75 and go 87 right there okay. And I think I drew it long enough, I actually took this line and scrolled it over. Yep. I went far enough just trim that to line to length and I can delete that reference line and voila! We no longer need this as well. Okay. So this line, the contours segment and this line are all going to be connected together.

00:20:11:16 – 00:20:33:16
Speaker 1
So let’s join these together. Join okay I’m just within a 2000s. Tolerance is fine. Join. And if we select it now they should all be connected as one. So this is going to start here. That’s the start indicator is going to start here. Work its way down all the way here and end up up here. And again it’s compensating for the swing of these square sections.

00:20:33:18 – 00:20:56:04
Speaker 1
In this toolpath for us by adding those lines to the end. So to find to finalize the toolpath for the contouring, we simply need to, create a profile toolpath. So if we swap over here and I select this and we do a profile toolpath as if this is a three axis component, okay. Imagine this is just a flat stock component.

00:20:56:04 – 00:21:16:01
Speaker 1
And it’s going to be cutting along the outside edge on the left side of the line. Cutting this out on, almost like a template. And that’s fine because the the toolpath is going to take that three axis G-code in conversational Cam Pro, and it’s going to convert it so that it cuts along the top surface, adding the rotation of the part to that toolpath.

00:21:16:03 – 00:21:31:29
Speaker 1
It’s pretty cool. All right. So for the 2D toolpath, I always do a big cut depth. Okay. Really, it doesn’t matter. I just like to use a whole number. A big, nice even number. Could be one inch, could be two inch. It really does not matter. This is two inch, so I’m just going to use it.

00:21:32:03 – 00:21:58:05
Speaker 1
Okay. The type of cutter I need to select needs to have the diameter that matches the tip of the taper ball cutter I want to use. So we’re using a eight inch tip okay on our taper ball cutter. So I’m going to make sure I’m using an eighth inch cutter. If we go select on our toolpath. There are G 200 cutters that Tracy has created in the tool library.

00:21:58:07 – 00:22:18:16
Speaker 1
That you can go use if you get if you download the tool library. But you can also use any cutter that matches the same diameter. Okay. But here you can see by selecting this, the diameter of this tool is an eighth of an inch. Regardless of what type of tool it is, as long as the diameter matches the diameter tip of the ball cutter you are using.

00:22:18:21 – 00:22:39:06
Speaker 1
Okay, so here we got the selected. We just need to make sure that it does the whatever cut depth is in here. It does the pass depth in one single pass okay. That’s critical. Only one pass I don’t care about the tool number. I don’t care about feed rates or even cutting speeds. All of that will be populated in and overridden in Conversational Cam Pro.

00:22:39:08 – 00:23:03:25
Speaker 1
So if we select this and we’re going to be cutting again, if I’m looking at the line I want my cutter to be on the left looking standing here looking down. That’s the left side of the line. So here left. And we’re doing it in one pass which is perfect. And down here I’m going to give this a name such as import contour.

00:23:03:27 – 00:23:08:05
Speaker 1
And we’re going to say calculate.

00:23:08:08 – 00:23:29:06
Speaker 1
Okay. And you can simulate it if you wish. You can kind of see like if it’s cutting out a template it would be cutting from the side. You know giving us that shape right. But what I want to pay attention to is to make sure if we check this toolpath in our 2D view, I want to, I get toggle that are our tool paths.

00:23:29:09 – 00:23:44:01
Speaker 1
This is it right here. So toggle toolpath 2D drawing visibility I like to have that on so I can see where the center of the cutter is, to make sure it’s on the correct side of the line. If you’re on the wrong side of the line, you’re going to get incorrect diameters, and it’s not going to be exact.

00:23:44:04 – 00:24:12:03
Speaker 1
So we’re just making sure it’s on the correct side, which it is. It’s on the outer side of the line in this case the left side. So the contouring toolpath has now been created but needs to be saved out so we can import it into Conversational Cam Pro. So if we close this and save our toolpath, the toolpath, post processor that I like to use is the one that we generated for this concept called legacy G 200.

00:24:12:03 – 00:24:33:16
Speaker 1
Turning Delta okay. Specific for the Delta controllers. So if we select that and then we save our our toolpath I’m going to put this c here under.

00:24:33:18 – 00:25:06:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. Customer support training course documents. And this will be for c cam Pro training okay. So we’re going to be doing this for import contour and save okay. So we’ve now saved out that again three axis G-code. And we’re going to be importing that a little bit later into Conversational Cam Pro. Now the second thing I need to do here is also generate parameters on where we want to turn round to rough all this material way with an inch and a quarter surfacing.

00:25:06:06 – 00:25:15:06
Speaker 1
Cutter. Okay, so if I take all this and I go to copy and paste and we bring it down here.

00:25:16:00 – 00:25:36:18
Speaker 1
I’m going to draw some straight lines. Let’s close this. We’ll just switch over to our other tab. There we go the design tab. And so if we go and create some straight lines and this will represent our starting and stopping points for turning around. So I’m going to start right there at that square corner. Stop right there at that square corner.

00:25:36:20 – 00:26:06:08
Speaker 1
And it’s going to just repeat the process on the other side. If we were to turn it round and remove all that material in the center, starting from here and cutting to there. So this is a square section. This is a round section. This is a square section okay. Is what we’re laying out. The other thing, that you can do that is a good recommendation, is removing additional material so that the tapered ball cutter has less material to remove, specifically in the cut depth.

00:26:06:10 – 00:26:37:02
Speaker 1
This is going to perform this entire contouring in one single pass, regardless of how much material is here. Okay. So our job here is to remove the excess material beforehand using our surfacing cutter if possible. So using this line let’s use our array copy tool and we’ll just copy it down. Let’s say every quarter of an inch. If we were to take a quarter inch past steps to see where we can remove additional material, and again lay that out.

00:26:37:04 – 00:26:57:03
Speaker 1
So if we go down in the y axis, let’s say three copies every quarter of an inch in the negative y direction, copy. Okay. So obviously this bottom line there’s it’s it will be cutting way too deep. Making it so we don’t have any area left. But here I do have, I have a section here that we could rough away.

00:26:57:03 – 00:27:21:24
Speaker 1
We have a section here, possibly a section here and another section here. Okay. So what we can do is we can just use our scissors tool and I’ll just trim away the sections that are obviously going to be creating problems that cutting away the details of the actual, spindle. So we have this line, this one, this one and this one.

00:27:21:29 – 00:27:40:03
Speaker 1
Okay. Now if we, select that line and look at the measurements, it says about two a little over two inches for this. So we can shrink that up. So if I take this line and we just modify the size and we just make it, let’s say an inch and 7/8 looks like it’s probably applying now. It doesn’t.

00:27:40:03 – 00:28:03:02
Speaker 1
If you don’t have your fractions memorized, you can just round it to the nearest 10th 1.9in. Okay. So so very good. And then we can just take this and bump it over with my mouse until we have just a little a little room on both sides. And again if that feels a little too tight, you don’t want to take the chance of the surfacing cutter accidentally bumping into or your finished edge make the line a little smaller.

00:28:03:02 – 00:28:25:23
Speaker 1
There is nothing wrong with that. So let’s make this 1.8in long. And there you go. So you got a nice probably around a 16th of an inch little gap. Both sides roughly. And that’s 1.8in long. Beautiful. Let’s do the same thing with this guy. So selecting this let’s go see what this length is. The size is 1.35.

00:28:25:23 – 00:28:49:14
Speaker 1
So I mean if this came down to an inch and a quarter that’s the width of the cutter here okay. So that is the smallest er smallest length of surface area that we can provide with an inch and a quarter surfacing cutter which is just fine. So we’ll do that there. This one, let’s repeat it. So we’ll come down let’s say to an inch and a half see what that looks like.

00:28:49:17 – 00:29:08:22
Speaker 1
Yeah. It’s not too bad. I’ll even bump it over here with my mouse. Just, with my arrow keys. Just a little bit. Okay. And the last one here. Let’s go. Yeah. Change this to an inch and a quarter. So it looks like there’s two areas where it’s using the full width of the cutter and just plunging straight down to machine that flat surface with the profile cutter.

00:29:08:25 – 00:29:27:21
Speaker 1
Whereas this is a longer segment, you know, it’s about inch and a half and this is a longer segment about 1.8in. Right. So if we take those and we’re going to copy those, to the opposite side, actually to make this copy easy, since I’m not on the material, I’m doing this below. It’s easy to draw a line down the center.

00:29:27:21 – 00:29:58:21
Speaker 1
So we have a mirroring line that we can use. And now if we select those four, roughing pass areas and select the line, we can mere copy of that flip about line and perfect. Okay. So we’re going to be using a turning round toolpath, to do this process and this process here. And we’re going to be using a turning tool profile process to just plunge the cutter down and turn it around the circumference at this segment and this location.

00:29:58:24 – 00:30:25:02
Speaker 1
Okay. So technically we have one roughing process turning round 233 turning round to pass the we’ll need to create. And then we’ll need to create two, one and two turning tool profiles for the surface and cutter five roughing Tool pass in total in preparation for the again the contour turning to take effect. So all we need now are dimensions.

00:30:25:05 – 00:30:45:18
Speaker 1
And so if we go and grab our our, dimensioning tool here and I need to measure from zero. Okay. That’s the critical thing. This this toolpath was all programed from again zero from those parameters. So we need to do the exact same thing when we’re measuring dimensions for conversational cam Pro. So, to do this there’s, there’s a couple of ways.

00:30:45:18 – 00:31:06:27
Speaker 1
I’m just going to draw a little circle here. That’s a little let’s say a half inch in diameter. I’m just going to put it on. You know the center here. But then I can select the circle and this rectangle and say make that in the middle of the last selected object. So that’s lined up with XYZ zero again for this drawing here.

00:31:06:29 – 00:31:15:05
Speaker 1
And we can measure from the center of that circle. Makes it really easy. So the snapping for a circle automatically snaps anywhere. As long as I’m close to the center.

00:31:15:28 – 00:31:41:06
Speaker 1
Now, I can dimension out all of the roughing tool paths using the surface and cutter from the center of the circle to the first starting position of the turning round segment. We’ll go from center of circle to the next starting position. Center of circle to the ending position.

00:31:41:09 – 00:31:58:19
Speaker 1
Center circle. This one is to the middle of the surfacing cutter, because that’s an inch and a quarter wide. So we’re going to do a tool profile. So I like to put my tool profiles. If I’m using dimensions for the same cutter I’ll put my tool profile dimensions on the bottom half. Whereas the dimensions on the top are for my turning round toolpath.

00:31:58:22 – 00:32:11:05
Speaker 1
Just keeps keeps it simple. So here’s our starting parameter for this turning round segment. Start and end.

00:32:11:08 – 00:32:26:18
Speaker 1
And here is the center of the cutter for the turning tool profile. And the last dimension here along the length is to where we’re going to stop turning round along that corner.

00:32:26:21 – 00:32:48:02
Speaker 1
Okay there we go. Now the final dimensions we need for these five tool paths are vertical dimensions. The diameters okay. So we need to know what we want to turn this round to here at the larger diameter. And we want to know what we’re going to turn around to at the smaller diameter okay. Pretty easy numbers. The other one is for the tool profile.

00:32:48:02 – 00:33:22:20
Speaker 1
We’re just going to be cutting a quarter of an inch deep okay. So we’ll start at 2.5in in the diameter section and cut a quarter of an inch deep for these two tool profile segments. All right. So now that we have all the information we need for conversational cam, not only did we create the, trace the tool path and create the contour toolpath ready to import into conversational cam, but we also created all the parameters we need to program the roughing tool pass using the surface and cutter before the contour turning.

00:33:22:22 – 00:33:50:07
Speaker 1
So let’s bring over conversation plan Pro. And let’s go to Pro. So this is again C Cam Pro. So we’ll go to projects and let’s create a new project for this process. So if we go new we’re going to give this project name I’m going to call this re Pro duction spindle for the. And we’re going to be using the turning workstation to do this process and push safe okay.

00:33:50:07 – 00:34:09:22
Speaker 1
So now we can select this project and push select. And it will have selected here. And it shows the workstation that we had said that just a part of this project. So if we select the workstation we can now add parts to this workstation. So if we manage our parts I’m going to say create a new part file.

00:34:09:24 – 00:34:35:04
Speaker 1
And I’m just going to use the same project name okay. Reproduction spindle I’m going to call this though for Delta because I know we’re going to do another training video, with this with the Mach3 system as well. So we’ll, we’ll call that one mock when we get there. So the length of this, let’s go. If we actually go and look at our drawing here, I didn’t give us a dimension, but we can easily measure that.

00:34:35:07 – 00:34:42:01
Speaker 1
So if we were to measure the full length of the material.

00:34:42:04 – 00:35:11:12
Speaker 1
It’s 20.75in. Okay. And the full, diameter of the material is 2.5in square. Right. So if we go to C Cam Pro and the length is 20.75 and the thickness is 2.5, this is and we have the number of sides four sides and per safe.

00:35:11:15 – 00:35:32:11
Speaker 1
Okay. So there’s our part. And the part parameters that we have we have selected. And let’s put as close that. And now we can select the part in our production tree here our project tree. And we can add tool paths. So the first things we’re going to be doing is the roughing tool pass. And if we we know that the first thing in the middle is just going to be turning it round.

00:35:32:11 – 00:35:57:08
Speaker 1
So we’re gonna go to our turning toolpath, turn it round and add that. So that’s going to be our first one. Now if we go and look at the drawing we have, we have the main turning round which is one. And then we have 234, four and five. So we’re going to be five tool pass in total. Three of them are going to be turning round and two of them are turning tool profiles.

00:35:57:10 – 00:36:19:07
Speaker 1
So if we come over here we have turning round means we need to do this two more times. Copy that. Copy that. And then we’re going to add one more turning technique called a turning tool profile. We’re just plunges the cutter at a single location giving us the details. So those five tool parts will rough out the material in preparation for the contour turning.

00:36:19:10 – 00:36:40:15
Speaker 1
Okay. And the technique we’re using for the contour turning is an import toolpath method called vector turning, where we’re again importing the three axis G-code from a third party CAD cam software. And it’s going to convert it into a turning contour process. So we’ll add and those are all the tools that we will need to produce the spindle.

00:36:40:15 – 00:37:06:07
Speaker 1
So let’s push close property. And let’s start filling out some parameters. So the first one is the first round section. So if we go back to our drawing here the first round section starts okay. So this is x0. It starts at 3.6613. Now we can be as detailed as you want to be when it comes to these numbers.

00:37:06:07 – 00:37:25:00
Speaker 1
I’m just going to round to the nearest second digit. So 3.66 just to keep life simple okay. So 3.66 is what I’m going to put here as my start position. But let’s go select the tool. I’m going to scroll down here in our tool library and go to Surface Planing inch and a quarter. Select that tool and this will be tool number one.

00:37:25:00 – 00:37:45:05
Speaker 1
Default tool number one. And this is not turned round. This is a square area that we’re trying to turn round. So we’re going to start the position though at 3.66 based on what our drawing said. And we’re going to turn it to the diameter of what we’re looking here. We’re going to turn it to the diameter of 2.5in.

00:37:45:07 – 00:38:13:12
Speaker 1
Round in this middle section. So if we put here turn to diameter 2.5 candidates and the ending position along the x axis. So again from x0 here to the very end where we’re going to stop turning is 16. Let’s say 0.03. Okay. 16.03. It is at any position 16.03. Now the rest of these feeds and speeds are default.

00:38:13:12 – 00:38:29:26
Speaker 1
I’m going to keep them that way. Just to simplify the process for you guys, if you are already familiar with what to increase here to make a cut faster, you are more than welcome to do. So. I’m just going to use the default feeds and speeds for this today okay. So go finish and save it here.

00:38:29:29 – 00:38:51:03
Speaker 1
And we’ve now successfully programed the first round roughing process. Now we can do the second and the third. So number two. So this one we’re going to use the exact same tool. By clicking on that field we can select the exact same tool except this is now turned round right. We just programed this to turn this round. So this would now be rounded to 2.5in in diameter.

00:38:51:05 – 00:39:21:20
Speaker 1
And we’re now turning a another round segment here from this round surface. So yes, this has already been turned round. And this the section diameter that we turned round to is 2.5in. So now we need to know the starting position and any position and the diameter that we want to turn this next process to. So here we have a starting position for again that there’s the start .4.42 is the start .4.42.

00:39:21:22 – 00:39:50:22
Speaker 1
And the diameter we’re going to turn to for this smaller diameter is two inches. And the ending position is 6.22 okay. So any position is 6.22. And the diameter we’re going to turn it round two is two inches. Exactly. Again keeping the default feeds and speeds here just fine. And we can go finish and safe. Last one for the rounding roughing process and same tool.

00:39:50:24 – 00:40:16:08
Speaker 1
So we’ll select that. And yes this is on a surface that has already been turned round to 2.5in. And so what is the start position. And position and diameter looking here that I’m going to do this guy. Right. So this is the next turning round process here. So it starts at 10.88 and ends at 12.38 and again turns round to two inches at that section.

00:40:16:10 – 00:40:24:21
Speaker 1
So 10.88 12.38.

00:40:24:23 – 00:40:45:03
Speaker 1
And 12.38. And turns to the diameter of two. And there we go. Okay. So we’ve done our first turning round processes. Our first three. We still have two. Tool profile parameters using the same cutter, the inch and a quarter surface and cutter. So let’s go into the first one I’m doing calculating. Always

00:40:45:25 – 00:41:05:04
Speaker 1
Okay. So if we select a tool here, the same cutter inch and a quarter surface and cutter tool number one, this is asking us, where is again the surface starting from. So if this is this is going to be one of the tool profiles. This is going to be the other tool profile. What is the diameter section that those are being turned onto.

00:41:05:11 – 00:41:30:13
Speaker 1
It’s the same 2.5in that we did for the other ones. So 2.5in is our section diameter. So we’ll put here 2.5. And what is the x position okay. So for this guy we know that these two parameters in the bottom represent our x positions. So this first one here is 9.61. So if we put in there 9.61. Now this is a cool thing.

00:41:30:13 – 00:41:55:25
Speaker 1
I actually did not think about this when I added the second tool profile process in our list, but we we actually don’t need it. We can actually program the same. We can program multiple X positions as long as they’re all on the same diameter section with the same cut depths. Okay. In which they are. So this here and this here are along the same.

00:41:55:25 – 00:42:20:04
Speaker 1
Oh, that one right there. Right there. So these two those are along the same surface same cut depth. It’s just different x positions. That’s the only difference okay. So if that’s the case we can actually program both of these in one tool profile process in Conversational Cam Pro. So as 9.61 was the first one the second one is 14.60.

00:42:20:04 – 00:42:50:18
Speaker 1
So just 14.6. So to add a second x position we just put a comma. And we’re going to add the add the number which is again 14.6in. So in here we got 14.6. Do we want to use the profile height. No we have a very specific cut depth in mind for this process. And if we look at that from the inch from the 2.5in diameter section, this is plunging down a quarter of an inch, up from that 2.5in diameter section.

00:42:50:21 – 00:43:14:18
Speaker 1
Okay. So the cut depth will be a quarter of an inch. Yeah. And we’re done. That’s all it takes to finish and save. So again, we just barely did that with the tool profile. But we have this extra tool profile. Let’s show you how easy it is to get rid of that. I can go back to manage tool paths and I can select this one because the first one is what we did see number four.

00:43:14:18 – 00:43:33:00
Speaker 1
That’s the one we did. So we’re going to get rid of number five and just say delete because we no longer need it. We took care of that second profile within this one toolpath already. All right. So all that’s left over is our vector turning where it converts the gcode that we import into the software. So let’s go do that.

00:43:33:00 – 00:43:55:07
Speaker 1
So if we go vector turning and here we’re going to go import the G-code. So select this field so we can go locate that G-code I’m going to go quick access here. And it should be open file location. Yep. Back here under cam training and there’s my import contour file that was generated from our aspire software as a three axis program.

00:43:55:10 – 00:44:16:19
Speaker 1
So I can open that in there. So it imports it. And because we’re doing this for a delta system okay. We’re at defaults to a turning procedure. And you can see it’s going to be writing the specific codes that are allowed to be used in the Delta controllers called G two hundreds. The Mk3 systems don’t have that. So we had to approach this a different way.

00:44:16:22 – 00:44:46:07
Speaker 1
But we can still do it here in C Cam Pro. Okay. And we’ll show you that in the other video. Now this says that as it’s performing this contour turning it’s going to program it to where it’s rotating the axis at a default of 200 rpm. And there’s nothing wrong with that. 200 rpm usually gets the job done for, most sizes that are four inches or smaller, if you start getting above four inches in diameter, I recommend slowing these numbers, these numbers down because you may be feeding too much material through the cutter.

00:44:46:10 – 00:45:05:08
Speaker 1
Which will give you, I mean, not that the cutter can’t handle it, but it just won’t give you as smooth as finish as what you may be used to in smaller diameters. Okay. So I’m just going to keep that defaulted. And then the section diameter is asking where is this tapered ball cutter. That’s going to do this contour.

00:45:05:09 – 00:45:26:06
Speaker 1
Where do we want it to make contact with a diameter section. So if we look here okay. And if we look up look up here. So we we drew this line. So it actually makes contact way up here where these corners are swinging right. So that technically is our diameter that we need to find is up here from this point to the opposite side.

00:45:26:06 – 00:45:59:14
Speaker 1
So if we take this and I just mere copy it, vertically to the other side, and then we find a dimension, a vertical dimension from that point to that point, this is the section diameter that we want, the tapered ball cutter to start from. So that again it just approaches the material and wastes no airtime, being way above the material and slowly coming down to the material, we want to be as efficient but as, as safe as possible.

00:45:59:14 – 00:46:21:16
Speaker 1
So this is the section diameter we’re going to use for the contour turning, because it’s the largest diameter section that is being, approached at the beginning of the turning. So 3.5355 I’m just going to round that up to 3.54 okay. So we’re going to go a section diameter of 3.54. And now we can select the tool which is going to be our tapered ball cutter.

00:46:21:16 – 00:46:43:02
Speaker 1
So we’ll scroll down here we have tapered ball nose cutters. And there’s our eight inch eighth inch diameter tip. But it has a quarter inch shank. And again three degrees on on that tool. And this will work beautifully. So we can select that tool. This will be tool number two. Since the surfacing cutter was tool number one.

00:46:43:05 – 00:47:02:25
Speaker 1
And the rest of these parameters besides one we’re going to keep defaulted. The only one I’m going to modify is the step over amount. Okay. This is defaulted to six thousandths because I said don’t auto calculate. So if you do say auto calculate if you say yes I’ll actually it explained it earlier or right there. Okay.

00:47:02:27 – 00:47:28:17
Speaker 1
So the auto calculate step over will calculate 2.5% of the cutters diameter. So the tip of the of the cutter is an eighth of an inch right. So that’s an eighth of an inch is the diameter tip. So 2.5% is the step over. That’s the distance the cutter is going to travel per rotation. So if we if we times an eighth of an inch by 2.5% right that back how do we go backspace.

00:47:28:17 – 00:47:51:10
Speaker 1
There we go. 2.5%. The step over is only three thousandths of an inch. It’s it’s teeny. Now, I’ve found that once you go past a certain step over, you can’t tell the difference in the finish. And that is when it gets to 6000. And so when it’s 0.006. And I don’t, I don’t go any smaller than 6000.

00:47:51:10 – 00:48:11:25
Speaker 1
So instead of auto calculating I think it does a little bit too much. So I say no and I’m going to make my stepover amount just 6007 inch. Okay. So it’s just a manual input from from experience. So anytime I’m contouring with this tapered ball cutter, the eighth inch tapered ball cutter, I just put a 6000 stepover in there and it kicks out.

00:48:11:25 – 00:48:42:11
Speaker 1
Beautiful finishes. Good. And we’re done. We can go finish and save. And we have now successfully, programed all of those sequences together. So we went from an image tracing where we laid out the, toolpath for the contouring. We laid out the, the roughing dimensions for the surfacing cutter, and then we populated all of those tool parts within these five tool paths.

00:48:42:14 – 00:49:05:14
Speaker 1
And now we’re ready to generate our G-code. Okay. So we can generate our gcode for the delta controllers. Yes. And there you have it. Okay. All together now it puts the first cutter and tool number one. Guess what was selected in the second cutter? The tapered ball cutter and tool number two. Well we can see this is really cool that this is all the surfacing cutter doing all those roughing passes.

00:49:05:16 – 00:49:27:24
Speaker 1
And then here is where it changes to tool number two the tapered ball nose okay. And this is where it actually converted all of the the had y axis commands in here for each of these lines, as if it was cutting from the edge, but it actually converted all those to a z axis parameter for us so that it’s cutting from the top, following the same parameters.

00:49:27:27 – 00:49:49:27
Speaker 1
But it over rid the spindle speed. What’s, what’s tied to the cutter parameter in our tool library in conversational cam, and automatically populated the feed rates based on the step over from parameters that we put into the field that we did. Just barely. So this is all now been converted for that contour turning, which is a majority of the program.

00:49:50:00 – 00:49:55:00
Speaker 1
And then it’s going to turn off the rotation and, and the program. So this is ready to rock and roll.

00:49:55:00 – 00:49:55:17
Speaker 1
just to make.

00:49:55:24 – 00:49:59:01
Speaker 2
So let’s say out this G-code save G-code file.

00:49:59:03 – 00:49:59:23
Speaker 1
Right.

00:49:59:25 – 00:50:20:13
Speaker 2
And we’ll put this in the same location. I had the other one just open file location back here in the projects. And this is going to be the spindle reproduction G-code a small t and save to hold do that. All right. And that wraps up the entire process.