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5-Axis Robot Carves Metal Like Butter
kkleiner sends along an amazing video of what robot-controlled machining is coming to. "Industrial robots are getting precise enough that they're less like dumb machines and more like automated sculptors producing artwork. Case in point: Daishin's Seki 5-axis mill. The Japanese company celebrated its 50th anniversary last year by using this machine to carve ... a full-scale motorcycle helmet out of one piece of aluminum. No breaks, no joints, the 5-Axis mill simply pivots and rotates to carve metal at some absurd angles. Every cut is guided by sophisticated 3-D design software (Openmind’s HyperMill)."
It's the Germans and the Japanese that are currently at the top of the heap when it comes to CNC Machinery... However there are a lot of good American companies up there too, one of the most popular brands in the USA is HAAS, although their 5/4 Axis machines aren't very special.
It's mostly because they focused on that market and become very good at what they did. You'll see in about 20-30 years China leading that area of industry since they have such a huge focus on manufacturing.
Anyways, it's the people ultimately programming the machines and the software used to program the machines that are the real driving force behind this industry, without the software these machines would just be dumb lumps of metal.
Yes, this is rather silly since America still has the largest manufacturing industry in the world by a significant margin.
You're right, I splashed the cash and bought.
Mach3 CNC controller
MeshCAM
Rhino
Let's say you have a small machine that has an XYZ envelope of 300mm a side, that's 27,000,000 millimetre cubes, or unique XYZ positions the tool and toolpath can follow.
1mm precison is worthless, at 0.1 mm precision you just went up to 27,000,000,000 unique positions, at 0.01 mm precision you just went up to 27,000,000,000,000.
You're probably not going to get a linear speed in excess of 1 metre second on anything even remotely hobby, 250 mm min is more like it...
at 0.01 mm resolution that's 25,000 positions in 60 seconds, that's approx 417 a second
we've got 27,000,000,000,000, so / 417 = 18 million hours to traverse all 27 x 10^12 points.
even assuming you had that kind of time, your machine is burning electricity at several cents a kWh... do the math.
So you can see how optimised tool paths, and so on are literally god when it comes to CNC.
Sure, there are free OS alternatives to the stuff I paid for, but I don't have the time left to live, nor the inclination to pay the electric bill, that using the free OS alternatives requires.
HTH etc
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
You're right, I splashed the cash and bought.
Mach3 CNC controller
MeshCAM
Rhino
[snip the math and analysis]
The resolution of the machine is irrelevant, it's the tool size that matters. If you have a 1/2" diameter end mill, you cut a 1/2" swath through the material. It makes no difference if you have 0.01 inch resolution or 0.00001 inch resolution, you'll still step over by about 1/2 inch when using that tool.
So you can see how optimised tool paths, and so on are literally god when it comes to CNC.
Yep, for production machining, optimized toolpaths are a very good thing. The common limiting factor for small machines though is spindle horsepower. The machine can only remove so much metal per hour, and that's directly proportional to the spindle horsepower. It varies with many factors (cutter material, cutter coating, cutter speed, coolant/lubricant, etc), but it's the thing that limits the depth of cut you can use for a given end mill. There's also no such thing as an "optimal path". There are many factors that determine what may be optimal in a given situation - surface finish (the look of it), surface roughness, tool life, machine rigidity, and more.
Sure, there are free OS alternatives to the stuff I paid for, but I don't have the time left to live, nor the inclination to pay the electric bill, that using the free OS alternatives requires.
I sure hope you're talking about non-optimal free CAM, because as it happens, the most capable machine controller available (for less than $5000) happens to be the open source one. I only put in the price limit because I hope that the vendors selling the more expensive controllers actually have some better features than EMC2 - I know what you have doesn't.
- The Sigless Wonder