New to NX Manufacturing, how to machine non part geometry?

[TLrider]

Hello All,

I'm Scott McClurg, I am new to NX Manufacturing. I have been using FeatureCam 2.5D for the last four years and Pro/NC 2.5D and 3D surfacing for 12 years prior to that.

I am having difficulty figuring out how to machine non part geometry. I have a submarine brow plane to machine, similar in shape to an airplane wing. Thicker at the sub body than at the tip. Where the brow plane meets the body it is above center which makes the top surface longer than the bottom surface. I want to machine the entire contour from the planar surface down past the lowest edge of the part. I will flip the part hold by the planar face and machine the radius surface by mirror to create a left and right hand part.

To do this in Pro/NC I create a 'mill surface' as a copy of the body and then extend the surface by distance or to a plane to get the body shape to be full depth.

So far in NX I have only been able to figure out how to machine just the solid body.

Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to do this?

Thank you and sorry for the lengthy post.

Scott

 

[DaSalo]

I'm not totally sure I understand what you are asking but I think you want to extend the body down to the green curve, mill that whole thing, and then stand it up and machine off that extra material?

One way or another you need to create a solid or a sheet body to fill in that air space so the cutter will have a surface to cut. There are probably at least a half dozen different ways to do that but I'll describe one:

1) Create a plane parallel to the top surface of the part at the level of that green curve.
2) Project the edge of the bottom surface down to the plane (I think that is what you have already done to get that green curve but not sure.)
3) Offset the projected curve out a bit so the extension will have a bit of taper to it and the side of the cutter won't rub.
4) Create a "through curves" feature using the underside of the existing body and the new offset curve.
5) Add this new body to your part geometry and select the surface of your existing body and the surface of your extension body as the your cut area.
6) That should do it.

You could also just extrude your green curve up using "until extended" as the end condition. You would then probably want to add a bit of draft to the resulting body to prevent cutter rubbing.

When you go to machine that bottom face you will either want to suppress the the hole features, use "delete face" to remove the holes, or extract a sheet body with the "remove holes" box checked and use that as part of your part geometry and cut area.

 

[TLrider]

DaSalo,

Thanks for the response; you are correct, I want to extend the body down to the green curve which is projected. As projected the curve is normal to the plane on which it is projected so it does not represent the intersection of the extended surface and the plane I want to extend to.

I created extracted faces and extended them to the plane the curve is projected to. I then needed to add the extended surfaces to my workpiece geomety in MFG which I had not done last week.
Now that the extended faces are recogonized as workpiece geometry I can machine them. Same strategy as Pro/NC with different methods to get there.

Thnaks again, Scott