Originally Posted by
Volkhard
Hello guys and thank you very much for all the input. I think I should be more specific about what I am trying to do, to make it easier to respond.
Up to 4 sides machining: It will be okay to place the part into a jig, machine one face,pause, turn the part manually, machine the next face, pause and so on. so we don't need to have a 4th axes to move the part in 90 degree increments, although it would be a nice challenge to built such a jig.......
The machining is very basic, just some routs and holes routed, nothing dramatic, but that shouldn't really matter.
The core of my question is is regard to paramatric programming (at least the way I understand it)
Let,s say we have a part 1000mm long (LX) (forget the 4 faces at the moment, as that means just 4 programs tied together with pause in-between).
We want to drill a whole 10mm from each end and in the center.
That would mean hole 1 is at 10, hole 2 is at LX/2 and hole 3 is at LX-10
If the part is < 750mm we only need the 10mm and the LX-10mm hole
If the part is >1250 and < 1750 we would need 4 holes : 10mm ; LX x 0.33 ; LX x 0.66 ; LX -10
If the part is >1750 we would need 5 holes : 10mm ; LX x 0.25 : Lx/2 ; LX x 0.75 ; LX -10
Mathematically it is no problem to create the expressions needed for the location of these holes.
I like to be able to create a program with these expressions and have the ability to enter the value for LX (length of part) while the program is calculation the number of holes depending on my formulas and the position.
The usual way I see often used, is to create a CAM drawing first, transfer into a CAM program second and finally give it to the operational software driving the controller.
If I have to create the CAD drawing to end up with a DXF file, is there a way / program where I can apply these mathematical expressions to create the dxf files.Or can I skip CAD/dxf and go directly into CAM to create these?
At the moment for me it is all about how to create this in a timely and convenient way. Of course, the product is a little more complex than the example above, but that doesn't matter as the principle is always the same.