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Hello All
I have been trying to get my head round cutting out tapered holes via Vectric VCrave Pro without success and I am after some pointers. I want to be able to rough out the tapered circle pocket, then do some kind of helix interpolation down the tapered sides to smooth out the steps. Would be helpful if I could do this in VCrave, but if not an example in pure G Code would do.
One of the restrictions of Vcarve is that while it is great for 2D/2.5D CAM. it can't do this 3D kind of thing. Unfortunately, it's not straightforward in gcode either. If you use the G2/G3 arc/circle commands, you can either cut a circle at a single depth, or cut a circle with steadily increasing depth by advancing in Z while cutting the circle with constant radius. No tapers.
I would suggest that you could look at Fusion 360 which has a full CAM capability which would produce this kind of gcode. There is a bit of a learning curve involved (depending on where you are coming from - this could be an understatement!) but it could do what you want and it's free for home and hobby and small commercial users.
One thing that might help (if it goes to the sort of angles you're looking for) is the Vectric chamfer plug-in/widget or whatever they call it*. It's meant to be able to cut chamfers of any arbitrary angle using e.g. a ball nose cutter, you can adjust the smoothness apparently by setting the step-over. I'd be interested to know how you get on with it as I have a project coming up which is going to need a lot of strange angles cutting.
* https://gadgets.vectric.com/V8/chamfer.html
Never tried that, will give it a go. Thanks
May look into that if there is no other option. Cheers.
Here one to try,
Example to draw a ER32 collet holder: Draw out your largest circle say 32mm dia within draw smaller circle say 25mm dia, draw another circle say 17mm Dia, draw a vertical line 9mm long starting top of largest circle down towards centre select and circular copy this say 400 times ( the more lines you copy the smoother the finish) x 360 degrees.
Select smallest circle "pocket toolpath" to full depth say 36mm,, select all circular copied lines "Fluting tool path" run preview job done.
Hope it helps.
Phill
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Thanks for that, will look into that.
Have tried your idea out in VCarve, its a nice one but takes too long to generate the hole. And my machine will not take a massive ramp up in speed and feed rates to reduce the cycle time to a respectable level. Pity because I like this approach. Thanks for the input.
Another way of doing it (particularly if all your holes have the same angle) would be to get a custom cutter made - best shape might be an endmill with angled sides I guess? If this appeals I'll have a word with my luthier friend Mike who had some made recently - but they won't be ultra cheap.
Have tried to use the plug in chamfer program in VCrave 10 but it keeps bombing out with various errors with my system so no joy there. Had looked on the net for a cutter. The nearest I came to what I need is a 7 degrees cutter, will have to workout what the difference is in diameter between the 8 degrees and 7 degrees then go for the cutter to make the smaller holes and opening up the rest with the same cutter.