3 Axis Milling

  
 
3 Axis Mlling includes 2.5 axis capabilities plus routines to machine complex, contoured surfaces routinely encountered in mold making and aerospace applications.
 
CAMWorks 3 Axis cycles are developed for speed, accuracy and efficient memory usage. Simple and complex parts can be cut quickly and accurately with a high quality toolpath.
 
Some of the features are below.
 

All 3 Axis Cutting Cycles:

  • Can be modified to stay contained within an area or to avoid an area
  • Provide interactive and automatic methods for defining contain and avoid areas
  • Have retract options to reduce travel distance between retract and reentry moves
  • Can generate high-speed toolpaths with no sharp corners
  • Can generate toolpaths with ball, flat, hog nose, tapered ball, tapered flat, or tapered hog nose tools
  • Allow user defined start and end Z depths
  • Can have separate XY and Z stock allowances
  • Allow contain and avoid areas to be defined with different tool side conditions for On, Upto and Past
  • Allow contain and avoid areas to have multiple closed areas
  • Allow avoid areas to be defined such that the tool will machine over the avoid area
  • Provide the ability to generate toolpaths as separate threads and in separate processes. Multiple toolpaths will generate simultaneously and at the same time the user can continue working in other areas or on other CAM models.
 
 
  • All 3 axis cycles except area clearance and flat area support an option to restrict the toolpath areas to a given slope and provide options for up and down milling.
  • Area clearance and Z-Level support an option to avoid small pockets.
  • The pattern project cycle slice pattern includes options for cross machining.
  • All 3 Axis milling operations support rest or leftover machining. Rest machining is used to reduce air cutting by restricting toolpaths to areas within the feature that have not been machined previously.
  • The constant stepover cycle removes material by maintaining a constant user-defined stepover relative to the surface. This cycle generates a semi-finished or finished toolpath with a true constant stepover regardless of the slope being machined.
  • The curve project cycle removes material by projecting 2.5 Axis engrave or curve features on the 3 Axis feature. CAMWorks can calculate a single pass or multiple passes for engraving.
  • The flat area cycle uses a roughing pattern to remove material on flat faces.
  • Adaptive roughing strategy provides the ability to cut using the full depth of the tool and safely run your machine at optimum speed. This can reduce machining time up to 40% over conventional roughing with less wear.
  • Z Level/Constant stopover combination operation can be used for machining steep and shallower slope areas in one toolpath.

 
Note: The features and functions described above for 3 Axis Milling do not apply to 3 Axis Rough and 3 Axis Finish cycles. These cycles use older technology and will be discontinued in a future release.
 
Assembly Mode
 

CAMWorks leverages the power and flexibility of SolidWorks Assembly mode to support CNC programming of multiple parts for production machining and to more accurately represent the machining environment.

Some of the key benefits include:

  • The entire machining environment can be modelled including machine components, parts, stock, clamps, and fixtures. As much or as little detail as desired can be modelled in the SolidWorks assembly document.
  • Multiple copies of a part can be positioned in the assembly document and machined with CAMWorks.
  • The same part can be machined with multiple different machine tools.
  • Multiple SolidWorks configurations can be machined in one assembly document.
  • Ability to split instances of the same part and generate separate features and operations.
  • CAMWorks data from CAD part models can be imported into an assembly document.