PATH: Surfacing: OCL Capability

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bill
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PATH: Surfacing: OCL Capability

Post by bill »

Here are a couple examples of PATH Surfacing capabilities. Not Bad :o SlipTONIC!

P.S. : Thanks to whomever it was that submitted that sailboat hull to the forum! Additionally, This will take much more than several minutes!

WATERLINE
hull_waterline.png
hull_waterline.png (311.48 KiB) Viewed 2920 times
DROP_CUTTER
DropCutter.png
DropCutter.png (176.31 KiB) Viewed 2920 times
chrisb
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Re: PATH: Surfacing: OCL Capability

Post by chrisb »

Very impressive, indeed. Did you use the Path_Surfacing?
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bill
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Re: PATH: Surfacing: OCL Capability

Post by bill »

chrisb wrote:Did you use the Path_Surfacing?
Yes, unfortunately the ICON and NAME of the operation does not always render properly; at least for me!

That is a minor issue. The major problem I am seeing is the constant refresh that is typically necessary through out the rest of FreeCAD.

It needs to be checked/temp disabled for enviroments such as the PATH:Surfacing that do extensive calcs. upon every refresh/recompute of FC environ.

However, all this is fantastic progress. I dont know when slip sleeps. Truly a great effort!
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Post by herbk »

Hi,
Inpressiv, but nut to produce... If you feed this code to a mill it ends with an machine crash.
The shown pathes going around only once. If you want to mill out this hull of an peace of wood (or whatever) you have to remove the material in steps.
I tried to mill out a few much more simple parts, but the results are very unpersuasive.
At least it hase to be possible to set dimensions of the raw workpeace and a vertkal stepsize.

you made the path witch "dropcutter" i suggest. waterline works better, but also need to know where is some material to take away.
Gruß Herbert
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sliptonic
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Re: PATH: Surfacing: OCL Capability

Post by sliptonic »

Path Surfacing is NOT ready for any kind of real use. It was a simple experiment to see if I could get good path data out of OCL. I put it together by basically cutting and pasting Awallin's sample code. The fact that this works at all is testament to OCL and not to me or Path.

If someone wants to start looking at this closer, a good place to start is by studying HeeksCNC's surfacing and 'attach' method which also uses OCL. HeeksCNC has the user create a 2D closed boundary to constrain the XY movement and then 'attach' a 3D object to control the Z movement. Then a 'pocket' operation is created. This results in the area being cleared with the bottom of the pocket conforming to the surface of the 3D object. All this is done in Python.

HeeksCNC and Path share a lot of concepts and even code (libarea) so adapting a HeeksCNC like solution to surfacing is extremely do-able.

That said, the HeeksCNC solution has some limitations. A solution written from the ground up in Path might be even easier and better in the long run.
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bill
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Re: PATH: Surfacing: OCL Capability

Post by bill »

herbk wrote:Hi,
Inpressiv, but nut to produce... If you feed this code to a mill it ends with an machine crash.
The shown pathes going around only once. If you want to mill out this hull of an peace of wood (or whatever) you have to remove the material in steps.
I tried to mill out a few much more simple parts, but the results are very unpersuasive.
At least it hase to be possible to set dimensions of the raw workpeace and a vertkal stepsize.
Firstly, this software program is not going to make anyone an instant machinist.

Second, machining this part is dependent on very many factors which leads to...

Third, It will require several operations, including roughing via dropcutter with large and small cutters, and then switching to a ballnose for final.

Finally, if you try generating this tool path (Surfacing) out of the box with no modifications to parameters, you will find the RAPIDS moving through the final finished work which ALWAYS will result in some form of crash until you make adjustments as below.
rapids_up.png
rapids_up.png (53.95 KiB) Viewed 2880 times
The message here is PROGRESS no testaments required! I myself have yet to generate one data point-on one curve-on one path. But I dont think we should re-invent the wheel.
herbk
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Re: PATH: Surfacing: OCL Capability

Post by herbk »

Hi Bill,
all you pointed out i agree to 100%...
Firstly, this software program is not going to make anyone an instant machinist.
Not this and not each other in my mind...
But a lot of people are thinking like that, - my post before should only remind that some things are not in that state as it looks like. ;)
Gruß Herbert
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