Experienced Inventor user / Newbie HSM user for Haas ST-30Y

Hi,
We are going to manufacture more of the parts that we design ourselves in the near future in order to improve delivery time.
We have ordered a Haas ST-30Y which should be sufficent for 75% of the parts that we design.

Being that we use Inventor every day, we presumed that the HSM "ultimate" (with mill/turn) would be ideal for our machine and we therefore bought this.
I am new to CAM but have some basic G-code knowledge. To me it seems that it generates an awful lot of code for stuff that is kind of simple.

Is it common to clean up code manually after I have generated the NC code through the ST-30Y post?

Furthermore - if I am required to turn the part in the chuck halfway through in the sequence - should this be done as a separate program or does HSM in Inventor have a useful stop & reverse part feature?

I find that there is very little documentation and even books on the subject. Slightly worried that I have spent 100k+ on a machine that we will not be able to use efficiently. I am also a little bit surprised that the speeds & feed rates are not generated automatically based on tools & material in CAD model.

Many thanks & kind regards
JH

Autodesk has a forum for HSM, which has talked about "tolerance" and "smoothing" settings. Using these judiciously has an affect on the output. A ton of lines become arcs. Try a tolerance of .002" and smoothing of .001" and see what happens to the length of your code. Read up on this in the forum if you can find it. If you register in the forum, and ask the question, you'll get an answer, but it'll be a good start to do a search first.

Thanks Beege. Will look into this. Have to say that I'm not that impressed by how manual HSM for Inventor seems though. Starting to understand why most of our subcontractors just read our drawings and punch the code into the machines manually.

Hello.
We run a Haas mill with hsm and do no modifications to the code. I am not sure about the lathe but hsm Autodesk Haas posts seem to be pretty good and usually up to date. As far as turning the part in the chuck just concider it as a second separate program. The nice thing about hsm is that it's very easy to setup multiple ops in one file. Use templates for everything. You can multiple operations in one template.

beege said:

Autodesk has a forum for HSM, which has talked about "tolerance" and "smoothing" settings. Using these judiciously has an affect on the output. A ton of lines become arcs. Try a tolerance of .002" and smoothing of .001" and see what happens to the length of your code. Read up on this in the forum if you can find it. If you register in the forum, and ask the question, you'll get an answer, but it'll be a good start to do a search first.

Click to expand...

Tolerance and smoothing setting affect milling the most. Haas ST30Y is a lathe. It shouldn't make much difference, if any with a lathe code.

Schjell said:

I am new to CAM but have some basic G-code knowledge. To me it seems that it generates an awful lot of code for stuff that is kind of simple.

Click to expand...

Give us an example of why you think it generates a lot of unnecessary moves.

I don't think he's saying extra moves, I think he is saying it is a lot of linear interpolation where it could be radii and stuff like that.

I occurs to me that if you check "in control" for the compensation it may post simpler code and let the lathe calculate the tool nose radius compensation.

Hi Rick. Correct, that's what I meant. Will try checking the "in control" button and see if the number of lines decrease significantly. Many thanks for your tip!

Wait, What????

plutoniumsalmon said:

Hello.
We run a Haas mill with hsm and do no modifications to the code. I am not sure about the lathe but hsm Autodesk Haas posts seem to be pretty good and usually up to date...

Click to expand...

Are you saying that a "straight-outta-Compton" post is fine for you, and when someone ( anyone ) adds shit to it ( to make it up-to-date) you're going to use it "just 'cos"?

Hello.
Almost. I am saying that the post we downloaded from Autodesk needed no modifications from us when it came to the mill. We did change one for the router. As far as using an update we do check what it does and how it does it first. I did the same in esprit when they would send me a new post.