00:02:22:14 – 00:02:36:14
Speaker 1
Hey, hey. Welcome to another training video with Conversational Cam Pro. Today we’re going to be focusing on a specific tool path. The basics of knowing how to use the indexing brick pattern tool path.
00:02:36:14 – 00:02:59:00
Speaker 1
And we’re going to answer two main questions. Just like all the other basic toolpath videos is what does this tool path do? What is the result visually of what happens, and how does the cutter approach the material to give us that result? And two, how do we program and how do we control it? So we’re going to help visualize that in two different ways using our aspire software as our 2D assistant.
00:02:59:02 – 00:03:19:17
Speaker 1
And then we’ll be showing the cutting result on the machine, towards the end of this video. So let’s jump on over to our aspire software. And just like many of our other videos, we have the same spindle layout where we have two square sections on both ends, and the center section has already been turned round using two cutters.
00:03:19:23 – 00:03:40:07
Speaker 1
The first cutter is our surfacing cutter that started here and turned it all the way around to the end, and then our two inch classic spiral cutter, which turned a tool profile here at the beginning and end of those round sections. So if you haven’t seen those videos on how to program those, those types of tools pass the turning around until profiles.
00:03:40:10 – 00:03:57:15
Speaker 1
Definitely go check those out. Now, this tool path is not going to be technically turning. We’re going to be applying a what’s called an indexing technique to a turned round surface. But the material itself will not be rotating as the cutter is traveling through the material.
00:03:57:15 – 00:04:13:10
Speaker 1
To help visualize this, let me bring out the 2D drawing of the brick pattern and cross-section view of what is going to be taking place. Okay. Now to do this technique, all you need is a cutter that has a flat bottom section to it.
00:04:13:10 – 00:04:45:23
Speaker 1
That could be, as simple as a surface cutter. It could be an end mill or two straight cutter or spiral cutter. Any of those types of cutters will give us a flat section on this indexing process. Based on the size of the cutter that you use, it will automatically calculate the number of sides and obviously determine the width of each brick that is going to be machined, during this brick pattern toolpath, today I’m going to be using a half inch cutter to help, visualize and demonstrate what this process does to this part.
00:04:46:00 – 00:05:05:14
Speaker 1
Okay. Now what this is going to do is the cutter is going to approach at the starting position, is going to plunge down, to the first flat section. And, but it’s going to be cutting across the material wall while the material is stationary. And to help show that even better over here, the cross-section view helps represent that even better.
00:05:05:14 – 00:05:28:00
Speaker 1
So if you look here we have these flat sections again evenly spaced around the circumference. And this is going to cut as deep as that flat section. But it’s not going to do so right on the the top of the material. It’s actually going to be starting off the material just to the side. And then after it’s got to that cut depth, it’s going to then cut across the part and then cut all the way back.
00:05:28:02 – 00:05:50:07
Speaker 1
And then it’s going to take our blank and index it to the next flat section area. And the cutter will just repeat that process, cutting all the way back, cutting way back and cut again and again and again until it applies the flats around the circumference at that single location along the x axis. And so that shows better over here.
00:05:50:07 – 00:06:09:17
Speaker 1
So after the the cutter has cut around the circumference, it’s going to leave this, these bricks as what we’re calling them. Again evenly spaced around the circumference at that single location. The cutter is then going to shift over the full width of the diameter of the tool. Okay. In this case a half of an inch is going to shift over.
00:06:09:20 – 00:06:33:07
Speaker 1
And it’s going to repeat that process again for the next brick pattern. But here you can see that this is offset 50% of the last brick section. And that’s just going to alternate 50% back and forth all the way down, repeating this technique until it gives us what we see here, a brick pattern design wrapped around again the circumference of this turned round section.
00:06:33:14 – 00:06:41:05
Speaker 1
Okay. So this is going to take a lot of small cuts to give us this type of design. But it’s very easy to program using a C Cam Pro.
00:06:41:05 – 00:06:47:17
Speaker 1
So here in Secant Pro we’re going to open up our projects. Go to our training sample that we’ve been using in other videos.
00:06:47:20 – 00:07:08:21
Speaker 1
And under this part that we have already programed we’ve already created Tool Pass here. The turning round and tool profile. That created that round section in the middle of this blank already we’re going to add the specific tool path today of the indexing brick pattern tool paths. We’ll add that that’s now in our list in the right sequence that we want it to be in.
00:07:08:23 – 00:07:26:12
Speaker 1
And now we can click in Brick Pattern to go fill out the questionnaire. To finish this process. So the first thing we need to select is the diameter of the cutter and type of cutter that we want to use. Again, traditionally the brick pattern is you’re using a flat bottom cut or something that gives you a flat bottom result.
00:07:26:12 – 00:07:51:23
Speaker 1
Right. So if I click here it select tool filled I could be using a couple of different cutters here. I could be using and mill compression and mill down cut and mill up cut. You know, there’s a bunch of those cutters I could be using the surface planing cutters. Those give me a flat bottom section in this scenario and in the in the cutting demonstration at the end of this video I just simply used a two flute straight cutter.
00:07:51:25 – 00:08:09:00
Speaker 1
Okay. So if we select a two flute straight cutter half inch diameter, that’s the tool that’s going to be shown here later on. So we’ll select that tool. And this is tool number three because the first two cutters was tool one and two to create the turned round section. And now we just fill in the last three parameters.
00:08:09:00 – 00:08:30:25
Speaker 1
You may notice that other parameters were automatically populated when we selected that tool. So we have the section diameter and the start in any position. Now the section diameter is just like the other processes is what is the turned round section that has already been accomplished, that you’re placing this technique in this case this this brick pattern onto.
00:08:30:27 – 00:08:50:26
Speaker 1
And we can measure that. We measure a vertical dimension, again from the top diameter sections. That will give us a section diameter that’s been turned round to two. And a half inches. That was done with our surfacing cutter, okay, previously. So we’re going to use that. That’s the exact, diameter. These bricks are being placed on two.
00:08:50:26 – 00:09:16:25
Speaker 1
So 2.5in is what we’ll put in that field. And now we can go give us our starting and ending position for this brick pattern layout. Now the way this brick pattern layout is, you’re always going to have the width of the cutter be back to back to back in the design. Right. So I put the edge of this, of this brick pattern on where the center of this, tool profile cut is happening.
00:09:16:27 – 00:09:40:10
Speaker 1
Okay. Which was five inches from previous videos. And the ending position could be the same. Okay. So the where because it’s back to back to back on the width of the cutter and the edge of the cutter happened to be the exact same position as the center of this cutter. Right. So, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you just need to understand that the the width of the cutter isn’t going to be partially over.
00:09:40:12 – 00:10:01:22
Speaker 1
Okay. The other brick, it’s always going to be the full width of the cutter in that section. Okay. So that means that in this scenario, because we’re using a half inch cutter, the start and end to ending position will always be divisible by a half of an inch, because that’s the size of the cutter that we’re using.
00:10:01:25 – 00:10:22:16
Speaker 1
You can actually measure that if you were to measure the dimensions, a horizontal dimension, and we could go from the left edge of our blank, which is zero to, let’s say, the starting point of our brick pattern, which is five inches, and the left side of our part to the end of our brick pattern. That gives us a starting and ending position of five and 13.
00:10:22:19 – 00:10:28:11
Speaker 1
And that distance from 5 to 13 is eight inches
00:10:28:11 – 00:10:49:20
Speaker 1
An eight inches is divisible, evenly by a half of an inch, which is why the the numbers are working out. Okay. Now I want to point out one other thing. We absolutely could use five and 13 as our starting position. But if we actually look closely at the first process here, the first, width of the cutter for this brick pattern is actually not cutting into any material.
00:10:49:23 – 00:11:10:05
Speaker 1
That’s because this classic spiral tool here has already removed all this material. And so the brick pattern, if it’s cutting here, it’s just going to be in air. Just air time okay. Waste of time in other words. And so let’s make this a little more efficient. What if we were to just get rid of the first section of bricks here.
00:11:10:08 – 00:11:30:01
Speaker 1
And that’s the exact same process in the end. In the end, there’s no cutting happening either on the last section of bricks. So what if we just deleted those sections and now we have a new start and end position based on again, the width of that cutter. So let’s go remeasure that. We’re going to go dimensions horizontal from zero to.
00:11:30:01 – 00:12:00:29
Speaker 1
Now. The edge of where this brick begins in this case is going to be 5.5in. And where this brick is going to end right there. And that is 12.5in. And that would be more efficient. There’s no wasted time. And just cutting in air. It’s actually cutting, material that exists that hasn’t already been machined away. So we’re going to use those parameters 5.5 and 12.5in, here in our starting position, 5.5 ending position 12.5.
00:12:00:29 – 00:12:10:17
Speaker 1
now the rest of this is defaulted and we can just push, finish and save. I do like to point out, just a few little details here and there just to understand what’s happening.
00:12:10:19 – 00:12:32:07
Speaker 1
The brick pattern style is selected as a 50% offset. We’ll show in other videos how to modify these and what it does in the design aspect. But that’s what you see here in the design. When it cuts from one brick pattern around the circumference and shifts over to the next brick section, it’s shifting 50% of the width of the brick for each section.
00:12:32:09 – 00:12:54:10
Speaker 1
Okay. And that’s the design that’s laid out there. Oh, ending position was 12.5. Okay. And we’re now ready to push finish and save. And these other toolpath have already been cut on the machine. So let’s just save out the brick pattern toolpath. We can now generate our gcode. We’ll save this out.
00:12:54:17 – 00:13:07:18
Speaker 1
And under our tool paths, we’re going to go to our indexing brick pattern and save this as indexing brick pattern. G-code and save. Now let’s go to the machine and see what these cutting results actually do to the part.
00:13:08:03 – 00:13:22:23
Speaker 1
So just like we program, the cutter comes down to the starting position directly off of the material and then travels across the part to machine its first section. The indexing process then takes place, and this whole thing repeats itself
00:13:22:23 – 00:13:25:01
Speaker 1
around the circumference of this part,
00:13:32:27 – 00:13:37:12
Speaker 1
Once that first section is complete, the cutter shifts over the width of the tool
00:13:37:14 – 00:13:45:14
Speaker 1
And the material slightly indexes so that the brick pattern is placed 50% different from one section to the next.
00:13:45:14 – 00:13:54:07
Speaker 1
second Pro automatically calculated how many sides are to be evenly spaced out around the circumference of this part based on the size of the cutter.
00:14:01:06 – 00:14:03:08
Speaker 1
All the cutting advantages shown here.
00:14:03:10 – 00:14:06:07
Speaker 2
Were automatically implemented in C Cam Pro.
00:14:06:07 – 00:14:10:26
Speaker 1
You should now have a basic understanding on how to program this indexing brick pattern toolpath.