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HSM Performance Pack for Mastercam
HSM Performance Pack for Mastercam is a powerful solution for all
Mastercam users who demand high speed machining capabilities. HSM
Performance Pack extends the capabilities of your exsting Mastercam
system with a wide range of new features, as well as reducing the
calculation and machining time.
HSM Performance Pack smooths the paths of both cutting moves and
retracts wherever possible to keep a more continuous machine tool
motion. The result is a high quality, gouge free tool path. This
translates to increased surface quality, less wear on your cutters, and
a longer life for your machine tools.
Below is an outline of the strategies included in HSM Performance Pack
for Mastercam. All operations feature tool holder collision checking,
and work with tapered tools.
Roughing strategies
Pocket clearing
Pocket is the main roughing strategy for clearing large
quantities of material effectively. The part is cleared layer by layer
with smooth offset contours maintaining climb milling throughout the
operation. To avoid plunging, the tool ramps down along a helical path
between levels.
To maintain a high feed rate, and thereby reducing the machining time,
sharp changes of direction are avoided by smoothing the tool motion.
You will not find a faster or more reliable roughing implementation on
the market today!
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Rest roughing
The most efficient roughing is achieved by following the work of a big
tool with a smaller tool in the areas that have not been cleared by the
previous operation.
To achieve this HSM Performance Pack uses a stock model of the
remaining material to avoid air-cutting. The stock model can
be generated by a previous operation, or supplied by the user.
For your really big parts, you can perform three or more rest roughing
stages with decreasing tool size.
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Finishing strategies
Parallel passes
Parallel passes is one of the most widely used
finishing strategies. The passes are created in the XY-plane and follow
the surface in the Z-direction. You can choose their angle as well as
their stepover in the horizontal direction. The passes can be linked
either in a zig-zag pattern or uni-directional.
Parallel passes are best suited for shallow areas and down milling. To
automatically detect shallow areas, the machining can be limited to a
maximum angle between the tool tip and the surface.
By selecting the down milling option, tool deflection can be minimized
when machining complex surfaces.
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Contour passes
Contour passes creates tool paths with constant
Z-height along the contours of the part.
Contour passes is the best strategy for finishing steep
walls. As with parallel passes, the machining can be limited by a tool
contact angle, too keep the generated tool path away from shallow areas.
The cutting paths are smoothed in the corners by a horizontal maximum
deviation rather than a radius. This means that sharp corners tend to
have very small smoothing radii in them, because the arc would
otherwise pull back too far from the corner. This represents a
compromise between the requirements of high speed machining, and the
need to stay within the specified tolerance.
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Horizontal clearing
The horizontal clearing strategy automatically
detects all the flat areas of the part and clears them with an
offsetting path.
When the flat area is shelved above the surrounding areas, the cutter
moves beyond the outline to clean the edges.
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Scallop / Constant stepover
Scallop finishing creates passes that are at a
constant distance from one another by offsetting inwards along the
surface. The passes will follow sloping and vertical walls to maintain
the stepover.
Although scallop finishing can be used to finish an entire part, it is
most commonly used for rest finishing, following a
combination of contour and parallel passes. The rest area is defined by
specifying the dimensions of the previous tool.
Like the other finishing strategies, machining can be limited by a
contact angle range.
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Pencil tool path
Pencil
The pencil strategy creates tool paths along
internal corners and fillets with small radii removing material that no
other strategy can reach.
It is even possible to make pencil paths along fillets that are larger
than the tool corner radius by setting the overthickness parameter.
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Pencil - Multiple passes
Pencil paths can form the basis of many other machining
operations. You can either make a limited number of offsets from a
pencil path to clear a fillet...
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Collapsed Pencil
...or make an unlimited number of offset paths in order to
finish the entire surface from the corners outwards.
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User defined retraction policy
Shortest path
The retraction policy determines how moves between cutting passes are
done.
Shortest path is the shortest possible gouge free path
moving in all three axes.
Using this strategy minimizes the amount of air-cutting. This
not only reduces the machining time, but also reduces the wear on the
cutter, by minimizing the thermal shock caused by the repeated cooling
and heating of the cutter and the risk of tool breakage because of the
changing load on the tool when it stops and starts cutting.
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Minimum retraction
Minimum retraction is straight up to the lowest height where
the tool is clear of the part by a safe distance.
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