Would HSM or advanced tool path control help our work?

I read a lot about High Speed Machining and other advanced toolpath controls to optimize CNC milling. I'm trying to figure out whether any of that would help us out with the type of work we do. As I understand it, a lot of it is for when you have a lot of material to remove.

We have a TM1 and are looking at getting another Haas mill in the near future. We don't do any parts that require a lot of material removal by milling. A typical part may require one or two facing passes with a carbide face mill or multiple passes to cut around the periphery of a part or cut a slot. We don't do any 3D work or sculpting or deep pockets.

I don't believe that HSM helps with drilling, tapping, etc. just milling. I hand code everything. I can optimize a program to minimize time in a lot of ways.

Anyone care to share their thoughts? Am I missing some miracle way to reduce machine time any further?

No way are you going to get any value out of a machine's HSM capability if you are hand-coding. So, if you know this new machine is always going to be fed hand-written g-code, don't waste your money on HSM if that is an added cost.

OTOH, can you know now what you will want to do on the machine in 2 or 4 years? Not having HSM machine capability (which extends beyond just high-feed low-engagement roughing) might be a big bummer when you want to be competitive on new work.

Regards.

Mike

theperfessor said:

I hand code everything. I can optimize a program to minimize time in a lot of ways.

Click to expand...

If you're hand coding, I'd avoid trying to implement HSM due to the extra paths you'd need to create.

But if you're getting in another mill, I can't see hand coding being efficient in the long run. You probably should start thinking about getting into CAM and searching for a package that would meet your needs.

theperfessor said:

We don't do any parts that require a lot of material removal ....

Click to expand...

In that case I would look at The Big Picture. Kind of an extreme example but when I first got an nc lathe, a pretty nice one, I thought it was wonderful. Ten times as productive ! Ten times as accurate ! Just look at all these pretty parts ! Damn !

And then it turned out to cost ten times as much and I was in the same place, except for ten time as much chaos and responsibility and money to worry about.

Hsm and a $30,000 cadcam program will make you faster but if you really don't remove that much material, will it pay ? Would some cheapass piece of junksoft (not to mention any names but Blobcad and such come to mind), do 90% of what you want for 10% of the price ?

I think what you need depends on what your shop does and your goals in life and maybe if you can create improvements elsewhere that are easier to implement and cheaper and maybe even more satisfying. "High end cadcam" is kinda like a really hot bitch, very attractive to look at but not always as satisfying as you'd hope.

theperfessor said:

multiple passes to cut around the periphery of a part

Click to expand...

This is where HSM would/could help you depending on part shape and material removal.
Just because it's HSM, doesn't mean you need have to cut at 10,000 ipm and 50k rpm, it's efficient by design at normal speeds also.

are you asking about getting HSM for the Haas machine control? or for your cam program?

If your wanting to safe time on parts look at a DM2 mill,, I have one and its super fast and you can run all of the tooling and programs from your TM1 but well be about 4 times faster ...

I have no CAM system. I was hoping that folks would tell me what kind of work is most appropriate for HSM, maybe what they use it for on their parts. I have read a number of posts about HSM, there is a thread right now on adaptive toolpaths. Most of what I have read involves removing large amounts of material as quickly as possible. I understand that. But most of what we do is 2.5D stuff and does not involve removing lots of material.

The one place I might use it is when we have cut out a disk from the center of a part to make a hole. Right now we drill a hole and then use it to plunge an endmill in to cut out a slug, it might be faster to just spiral down in the Z axis while cutting the arc in the X-Y plane. I need to check out roughing endmills that can plunge cut.

HSM toolpaths not only will save you time but they increase tool life. In general you would benefit from a CAM system, program changes in a parametric system are easy, change your model and regenerate toolpath that's it. Also you can save having to buy/wait for odd tooling, need a odd angled chamfer or odd radius? No problem all you need is a ball end mill. Fusion 360 is $500 a year, sometimes it's on sale for half that. As much as it gets shit on here it's a serviceable tool at a very fair price, no different than a Haas machine. I have no idea what your business model/plan for the future looks like but you're limiting yourself with FingerCAM