CAM : Point to Point along contour

[DaSalo]

NX 7.5:

Does anyone have a good solution for generating a point-to-point drilling program that will track along a contoured surface?

This part has ~100 holes that need to be drilled normal to the machine table but the surface is heavily contoured. I could specify an R plane that is above the highest point of the part but then the drill will be feeding down for several inches in the deep part of the contour and it will take forever.

My first thought is to break it up into 4 or 5 zones, define a different R plane for each zone and just accept that there will be some wasted motion. We're only making a couple of parts. Anyone have an easier way?

 

[joycejo]

Do you have holes in the model?

NX will do 5 axis positioning to seperate holes within the same operation. Mke sure Use Arc Axis is active when setting the tool axis to Normal to Part Surface

If you don't have holes how are you defining the location?



John Joyce
N.C. Programming Supervisor
Barnes Aerospace, Windsor CT
NX6.0.5.3

 

[DaSalo]

Yes, holes are in the model. What sort of operation am I creating to leverage the positioning capability? I wasn't thinking of this as a 5 axis operation. This will be done in a 3 axis mill. The holes are all normal to the machine table. It is just the surface of the part that has a constantly changing z height. I haven't done any 5 axis programming so there might be a ton of tools available that I am not familiar with at all. We do have licenses for most manufacturing options, but not hole-making.

I was planning to extract isoparametric curves from the hole edges to get center points that I can position to.

 

[joycejo]

OK now it think I understand.
When creating a drill operation select all the holes as the geometry. The tool should start at the top of each hole. It should be as simple as that. There should be no need to create extra curves. Do not use any part surface and if they are modeled to the correct depth then you can use "Model Depth"




John Joyce
N.C. Programming Supervisor
Barnes Aerospace, Windsor CT
NX6.0.5.3

 

[DaSalo]

Well, that works great and was super easy. I'm not sure why I thought I would have to do anything more than that. I seem to remember having to extract curves to get center points on a previous part that was very similar to this. Perhaps the difference is in how it is modeled. This is a nice, clean NX native model. I think the previous part was otherwise.

Thanks for the time John. I'll try to come up with something more challenging next time.