How do I setup a 5 axis mill?
I'm also concerned about where I will specify things like the distance between the A axis and my table surface, the fact that my C axis is attached to the A axis. Will I have to edit a kinematics file? Is the 5axiskins file intended for this style of machine? Where are these files located?
I am using Fusion 360 for CAM, and I'm hoping to do some indexed 5 axis machining. I hope someone who has done this before can point me in the right direction.
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JT
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They _can_ just refer to the angles of the rotary axes, or they can alternatively refer to the angle that the tool-tip is aligned to the work at the current XYZ point.
I have attached a rather detailed document on the subject (I hope the author does not mind). Depending on your mathematical background you will find this somewhere between fascinating and baffling. If you fall in the latter camp then be reassured that you don't need to understand all this, but you do need to know what you want your 5-axis machine to be.
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I wish I had come across that .pdf at the beginning of my search. It was very helpful. Thank you. I did take all that math in school, but it's been many years since I've used it.
From what I've read, I think that I need to use RTCP positioning to be compatible with Fusion 360, and most 5 axis CAM software. Is that the case? Since Fusion isn't able to generate tool paths from .stl files, I'm thinking about Deskproto. Any other 5 axis CAM recommendations in that (<1000$) price range?
I was using trivkins for those first attempts. I found that 5axiskins is intended for a machine with a tilt/rotate spindle, so then I found XYZACkins. I was able to compile and run it, and it is working pretty well. It has the table moving along Z instead of the spindle. I'm not sure if that is set in the kinematics or is just the way it is displayed in the vismach file. I don't think it will cause any problems for me to use it as is after I replace the offsets for the rotary axes, but I would like to change it to reflect the way my mill is configured. Any advice or links to helpful info would be appreciated.
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And specific instructions for the ini file are here linuxcnc.org/docs/2.7/html/config/ini-config.html
I can't look at your file from this Windoze computer it doesn't know what a tar file is. A more universal compression is zip.
Did you increase the number of axes?
JT
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http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ContributedComponents#XYZACkins_5_axis_kinematics_for_a_milling_machine
This setup is a lot closer to what I would like to use than the XYZA mill. I think it will be easier to start with this and modify it to suit my machine. Here it is as a .zip
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Louis wrote: LinuxCNC failed to start with the error "pin does not exist.".
The error report will also tell you _which_ pin does not exist, and also which line of the HAL file to look at.
With that information it is generally possible to see what is wrong.
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So now I've got to generate some gcode to run on this thing. I only have 3 axis CAM software now, so my initial plan is to generate multiple 3 axis tool paths and manually rotate the workpiece between them. I think 5 sided machining will be fine for now, but I'm still wondering if if would be helpful for me to get the XYZACkins setup modified to suit my mill so I can have RTCP motion. Is that required for continuous 5 axis toolpaths?
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Louis wrote: I'm still wondering if if would be helpful for me to get the XYZACkins setup modified to suit my mill so I can have RTCP motion. Is that required for continuous 5 axis toolpaths?
No, some CAM systems do the RTPC in the CAM software, and RTCP kinematics is counterproductive. However if you do it in the kinematics then you can run the same path with a different-length tool (for example) and the G-code paths will still work.
The configs in the PDF file I posted earlier have now been included in the JA13 branch of LinuxCNC:
github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/tree/joints...table-rotary-tilting
So if you switch to that branch you can try them out. I actually would very much recommend running joints_axes13 if you set up for RTPC, as it allows you to jog in the XYZABC space.
This is a video of one of those simulations:
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Many thanks!
I will donate if someone can really provide very clear and simple step by step instructions ...
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