After a few days of studying chaining....

So much for your free holdzit...

-- Bill

And you did it without a video. Amazing....

But can you drill holes? I've heard that is an EXTREMELY difficult task. For some (multiple names)people.

But can you drill holes? I've heard that is an EXTREMELY difficult task. For some (multiple names)people.

***** Iv'e centerdrilled, peckdrilled, chipbreak drilled, tapped, cbored, chamfered, and circle milled with UG, a few times each, and it's hard till you get the basics. Took me three or four holes till I figured out what was going on. Then it's pretty sweet. Weird part is I used an icon called "pre-nx5 holes". I tried to use the standard hole gimmic, but it sucked or I couldn't figure it out. I can't remember which one. It must suck or why would there be a "pre-nx5 holes" command?>

I think im confusing my two weeks on the cast with the pre-nx holes. Your right, it just makes holes, not cuts.

The pre-nx5 holes icon is for modeling hole features. It's provided to maintain compatibility with older versions of NX. The new nx5 hole function is much more powerful for creating many types of holes. For drilling, if you have a lot of similar but complex holes all the time, check out the Hole-making operation. I don't use it often with the turbine type stuff we do but could be the ticket for you.

-- Bill

Untill I get to moldbases, I won't be doing much drilling either. But from what I can see the hole cutting is pretty impressive.

Had to cut a pocket tonight and I used planer mill and profile with offsetsto give it a stepover to act like a pocket routine. Worked fine, but I can't keep wondering if there's a processor designed for pocketing. I kept looking at face milling...it seems the closest to pocket milling? Pocketing is a big deal in cam systems, You'd think there was a processor just for pocketing?

Cavity Mill... hello? They hide it under Mill Contour. It's THE main tool for planer work.

-- Bill

Cavity Mill... hello? They hide it under Mill Contour. It's THE main tool for planer work.

**** Yah, I use cavity mill a lot, but in this case I wanted to pick curves because the pocket had all kinds of areas missing on the sides halfway down I wanted it to ignore. With mill contour you can only select faces, not edges. However... Not cavity mill, but zlevel profile has merge Now that would of worked good for selecting faces.

Weird how cavity mill doesn't have merge?

-- Bill

Zlevel wouldn't work for pocketing, there's no multi-pass.

Bill...(or anybody who knows..jb?)be my hero...explain the difference between tanto,contact and on. In most systems "tanto" or tangent means cut normal.(ball cutters). "On" means cut using the centerline of the tool. And "contact" means try to hit two surfs at the same time, bitangent stuff.

But that's not the case here because there's another place to force it to use the cutter centerline so I know "on" doesn't mean that. I ran a streamline using half curves and half edges with no part picked. The faces had a /.0004 gap somehow, so I had to do streamline manually. If I select tanto the damn thing cuts deeper by the radius whether a bull or ball. If I pick contact it says there no solid defined and has to use on. On worked sweet.

Ok...I figured out how to manipulate it, but I need to understand the philosphy of what's going on here. I think if I understand this I will get the whole solid modeling thing. Right now, in my mind I'm just surface machining.

I hate doing things without knowing the intent or the concept.

Thanx in advance if anybody can answer this.

Tanto is "past". Or is it passed? One or the other. You end up at the most distant tangent point rather than the first anf if there isn't anything to "hold" you tool off the work, it will be ugly.

These systems really are a lot alike.

hmmmm... So your saying with a ball cutter tanto and on are the same if your cutting right on the surface. But if your say .005 deep, the ball mill will cut to the end of the surface plus whatever it is from the center of the cutter times 2, so it ends up on the other side of the ball mill tangent location...?? And a bull will cut past the end of the surface and stop at the point its not touching on the other side of the cutter?

So on would be ..on the edge.

But contact....help file says use it when the cutter doesn't fit. If a gully is too small for the cutter to fit, or when cutting along touching 2 surfaces. It says it in context with "on" So I think contact and on are the same, but contact does something when your touching more than one surf.

Am I even close?

Exactly!

Kickass man...the more I learn about this stuff, the less I know.

I looked up tanto on google, one meaning is

"after all". I wonder if that's where it comes from and not tangent to.

Tanto also means "knife" in japanese

Might be closer.....

yep, it's a knife that cuts from any angle. Not sure if that means anything relative to machining?

I looked it up in an old version 3 book. tanto means it will stop with the edge of the cutter over the edge of the boundry. I couldnt find it saying it goes past to the other side of the cutter. But I use a lot of .500 bull nose cutters, If it was stopping when the edge of the cutter met the edge of the surface I would of noticed it not cutting stuff. It would leave .500 minus the bull rad times 2 on the edge of the surface uncut. I'll have to test it tommorrow.

on means the centerline of the cutter will line up with the edge of the boundry. Seems this is the one to use most of the time?

"contact" means it will stop right as it ends contact with the boundry or edge. If your .005 deep with a ball cutter it should stop before the centerline gets over the edge. If your cutting on the surface, it should act like "on", and stop over the centerline of the cutter and the edge.

Yeah, and that's why I recognized it. Vero uses exactly the same term for this - even the "Contact Areas Only" thing.

The purpose of these switch settings is so that when you cut a tapered face, for instance, with a ball end mill the tool cuts all the way down if you are using a boundary or drive curve. Otherwise, the tool will stop before the entire face is cut. That doesn't happen with sharp cornered end mills. They drive the corner evenwhen you tell the software to drive the center. The intersection is the same place.

But it doesnt mean tangent to? I'm not sure what it means actually. I need to do a ruled surface test and see what it does with a bull and a ball. Maybe after a few friday morning beers.