One of the family of parts I design and manufacture is extrusion dies for Polin Depositors. One of the recent designs is one you have seen in other posts as the Guitar Die. Soon if you go to the Music City Arena in Nashville you may just find a guitar crouton next to your salad or maybe a chocolate chip cookie made with this die for the Polin Depositor.
Now this part has presented problems before with finishing where the corner round goes into the cavity. The way I have had to deal with this to prevent stair stepping in the past has been to basically create three or four cut paths to accommodate varying degrees of slope.
Besides the Volumill routine in CAMWorks for Solid Edge (CWFSE) my second favorite tool path is constant step over. This gives me a constant step over based upon the distance across a face and not just in “Z” or “X-Y” as was my previous fate in life. Now a word of warning here. This tool path follows contours it assigns across your part for maintaining this constant step over. This can result in gouging if you are using this path to cut down to a face. The way to avoid this is to create a contain or avoid feature and this will stop the tool path from gouging the floor of the part.
Is this not a beautiful thing? It did not matter where I looked in these cavities all the tool marks were completely concentric. I used a sketch profile around the cavities for containing and picked tool on the profile and I have a perfect blend going into the hole and then completely down to the bottom. Now keep in mind the finish can be as fine as you want it to be if you are willing to spend the cutting time to get there. This quality of finish is good for this type of application and requires nothing finer.
I can see that many of my 3D parts will require two tool paths only. Volumill with intermediary step cuts at sufficiently small cut amounts to allow for going directly into the constant step over finish tool paths.
Machined Audio Horn Lens 
Judging from the articles just posted and what they are about, Dave you sound like a very happy “little vegimite”; as we would say down under 😉
Hi Paul,
Yes I am. One of the round table sessions at SEU2013 was about things we users would like to see fixed. I walked in there and got hooted at by the SE guys, in good cheer of course. I was asked what I was going to complain about and I shocked them I think when I said NOTHING. Integrated CAM and improvements in big ways in CAD. For what I work with in my business I am well satisfied.
“For what I work with in my business I am well satisfied.”
A great endorsment for any product developer: now at least, as and when your jobs throw new challenges you and SE will have a great base relationship to build on.
Sorry to be off topic, Dave, but since you attended the SEU, maybe you could shed some light on this new SE rented by the month, on the Amazon cloud new concept.
http://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Community-Blog/SEU-Keynote-Addresses/ba-p/2111
I am referring to these quotes:
“And by the way, Karsten also announced an on-line Solid Edge store where you can rent Solid Edge on a monthly basis – available in August, with limited beta now.”
“This came up with respect to a discussion about cloud delivery. Solid Edge will always be available as a desktop application, but customers may at some point be able to serve it from an Amazon cloud server, or from a local server.”
And what was the most interesting was this one (now that we are considering doing it, let’s stop discussing it):
“This is common sense talk about a topic that has gone way out of hand, in my opinion.”
Fortunately very few SW users read all these.
Very nice part Dave…. nice also to here you talk about “Besides the Volumill routine in CAMWorks for Solid Edge (CWFSE) my second favorite tool path is constant step over.” Basically “CAM” in Solid Edge !!
Hi Billy,
Yes the constant step over solves some real headaches I have had. And of course integrated CAM solves a lot of them to. I had this cookie dough die shown in this post in the product showcase room. Did you have a chance to see it?
Hi 3D,
Noticed here when responding to Billy that my reply to you did not show up.
basically I am not sure where your quotes come from but in total what Karsten and Chuck said was that there will be no forced cloud usage and that while there are uses for the cloud Siemens would not put their critical data there nor would they force you to do so. I don’t have any information on SE by the month as i was not interested.
When you quote a single sentence out of a paragraph I can’t help you so if you will provide the whole paragraph I can respond.
I will say this though. Any SW user who is getting used to not being told the truth about direction of the software he uses and kernal changes and cloud stuff and plans that change every year would be I think a little envious of what the SE users git to hear.
Plain language, no kernal change, no forced cloud stuff in any area. Concentration on Geometry creation. It was all good.
Thanks Dave. That is exactly what SolidWorks has been saying for the past 2 years (no forced cloud usage).
It is interesting to notice that most of the CAD programs (less AutoDesk and Adobe) are getting on the same page in regards to the cloud.
Hi 3D,
I think they probably mean it when they say cloud free for SW. And I hope they mean it to when they state SW will always be there as you now know it. Sometimes there are so many differing messages from these Dassault guys that who knows what really is coming. I don’t think they know either and lots of dog fights are going on behind the scenes as far as I can tell.
I have to think though that Catia Lite is coming and like Matt says SW is end of life. It is all conjecture however on both of our parts as to what is really going to happen since Dassault refuses to commit to a clear path and contradicting statements abound. Bernard says one thing in Korea and then Sicot says re-assuring things elsewhere so who knows. I wonder if these guys talk to each other?
What I found most interesting is SE’s statement on
I am really surprised that you chose to look the other way after all your rhetoric against any cloud based implementation.
OK 3d we are going to establish some rules here. I am asking you for a complete paragraph of what you are quoting from. You need to provide complete quotes in context and not excerpts which imply something entirely different from reality. And this vague brief insinuation is disappointing coming from you after some of the conversations we have had.
“What I found most interesting is SE’s statement on” is meaningless.
I was there and my position on the cloud has not changed. The only cloud stuff mentioned was their recognition that some people might want to go there and they will provide you the capability to do so. They ALSO said in the keynote speeches that Siemens would not put their critical data online nor would they expect their customers to want to do so either and that desktops will remain the primary paradigm.
Now how much plainer can I be about the fact that Siemens/SE is not advocating the cloud for general use nor do they intend to force anyone there unlike some some other CAD companies you are familiar with? This no cloud commitment is PRECISELY one of the reasons I advocate for SE.
You are not representing the truth here and I would like to know why.
Dave, you were there and I was not, so I am going to take your word for it.
Thanks 3D, I am working on getting complete transcripts because some of it is of interest to both users and the industry in general. Have a good wekend.