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Setting Up Auto Toolpath Generation in Powermill

thinktankgroup

Plastic
Joined
Jul 7, 2017
Hi there!

We just recently purchased a 7-Axis Robot and are looking for ways to speed up our production process. I wanted to see if anyone had any advice/insights on setting up toolpaths in Powermill. (That is the software we are currently using.)

QUESTIONS

- How are you setting up auto toolpath generation?
- Any tips on how we can speed up the toolpath process?

We aren't completely sold on Powermill either, so if you have any tips on better software to use, we'd love to hear it.

Thanks in advance for any tips!
 
To be really efficient and take advantage of some of the higher order automation available, one really needs to have everything very well set up, and defined. Tools, tool library, tool holders, probing, etc... Right down to exact geometry and including shanks and collet bodies. ( collision checking and gouge avoidance )

After that, ( and until you get deeper into it ) it's macros, macros, macros. PowerMILL makes that fairly simple once one is acclimated.

That said, unless you have families of parts with similar features and/or sizes/shapes, I wouldn't bother. Since PowerMILL became advanced enough to allow one to work on any number of tool paths while others calculate in the background ( or in batches ), it's faster than you are.
 
We just recently purchased a 7-Axis Robot and are looking for ways to speed up our production process.

QUESTIONS

- How are you setting up auto toolpath generation?
- Any tips on how we can speed up the toolpath process?

Ask the robot!



Man, Are you going about this backwards! As advised above by old Gear Head you need rock solid stable processes BEFORE you go trying to apply automation. Trust me on this, I'm an automation engineer... Ive had 100's of clients come to me in the same perdicament having spent 30k on a bot and not getting any benefit. You're really bass backwards here.

Not trying to insult you here, but you REALLY need a professional applications guy to help you with this. You'll spend a lot of $ possibly going the wrong way or just too slowly progressing to ever make a buck.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 








 
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