Hi guys,
I'm running into an issue while tapping a 3/8" NC hole in some 3/8" thick aluminum plate.
Essentially what's happening is that the canned cycle is working properly while plunging into the threading. The problem is that while retracting, the tap isn't being fully cleared from the hole by the time the tool has stopped climbing in the Z. So, the tap is spinning in reverse while still sitting in the hole and it winds up reverse feeding the tap into the last 2 threads of the tapped hole. It's making them pretty chewy and I'm having to chase the threads from the other side of the hole. On 140 holes it's a bit annoying.
I'm running this in a floating tap chuck and I've played around with dwell times as well as retract heights and feed heights. I'm programming all of this in Inventor HSM and I've got the tapping cycle set as though it should be starting 1/4" above the part, which should be plenty of clearance for the spindle to allow the tap to be clear of the part. The retract height is also way overkill (.6" above the top height). Based on my setup to my knowledge anyways, the tap should be reverse feeding well beyond the top extent of the hole, but no matter what I do it doesn't seem to want to clear the tap from the hole... Am I missing something that should be extremely obvious?
Ray
I'm running into an issue while tapping a 3/8" NC hole in some 3/8" thick aluminum plate.
Essentially what's happening is that the canned cycle is working properly while plunging into the threading. The problem is that while retracting, the tap isn't being fully cleared from the hole by the time the tool has stopped climbing in the Z. So, the tap is spinning in reverse while still sitting in the hole and it winds up reverse feeding the tap into the last 2 threads of the tapped hole. It's making them pretty chewy and I'm having to chase the threads from the other side of the hole. On 140 holes it's a bit annoying.
I'm running this in a floating tap chuck and I've played around with dwell times as well as retract heights and feed heights. I'm programming all of this in Inventor HSM and I've got the tapping cycle set as though it should be starting 1/4" above the part, which should be plenty of clearance for the spindle to allow the tap to be clear of the part. The retract height is also way overkill (.6" above the top height). Based on my setup to my knowledge anyways, the tap should be reverse feeding well beyond the top extent of the hole, but no matter what I do it doesn't seem to want to clear the tap from the hole... Am I missing something that should be extremely obvious?
Ray