Thread: Advice on Surfcam chaining...

I've been using Surfcam for lathe operations for a short time, and I'm having trouble consistently chaining turning toolpaths.At work they have Surfcam 2005 but on my home pc I have Surfcam V5, I'm having the same trouble with both. This is the pathway I've been using after drawing the part;
(the part for instance, may be a 3" long shaft with an angle at the end and a radius on the starting corner)...

-NC
-Lathe
-Turn > Select chain: "single" or "chain"
-chain
(then the prompt at the bottom of the screen says "select beginning element")

-click just before the beginning radius

(then the prompt at the bottom of the screen says "select ending element")

-click again before the end of the angle

Ok,what I'm getting is ,sometimes,the chained toolpath appears on everything except what I want chained.Sometimes the chained toolpath appears just on the beginning radius.

Anyone know why this is happening?
Thanks!
m

Here are a few suggestions.

Make sure you don't have duplicate geometry. A line over a line screws it up. That screws up more beginners than anything else. I think there might be a delete duplicate entities button. Make sure all your entities are connected end to end, no gaps, no overlap.

A work around is to change the color of the path you want to chain and then mask everything but that color.

Your origin and geometry should be on the same plane.

There may be another answer to your problem. A lot of times I find it hard to help people at work that are stuck on some weird surfcam problem. It should be so simple, yet people seem to find a way to make it not want to chain or whatever. Sometimes the best answer is to start over with a new drawing or imported geometry.

Thank you-
Have a good one!~

When you chain geometry, the first click implies which direction you are going. Its like saying, "I want to start on this end of the arc (or line, spline, etc.) and go towards the other end." You don't have to click precisely on the end of the element. Anywhere between the end point and the midpoint will get the end of the element. If you're getting everything but the chain you want, it means you missed with your first click. Sometimes you have to zoom in extra close before Surfcam will believe that you actually are clicking on the geometry under the cursor and not the line right next to it. It may also help to change the color of the element you are starting on so that you can see where it starts. Another option is to copy just the geometry you are interested in to its own layer and then turn off the main layer.