The latest video in our Lunchbyte series introduces some brand-new features in NX 12 CAM. Take a look at the instructional video below, from Tony Lisle, PROLIM’s CAM application engineer.
Note: Some of these features are available in NX 12.0.1 and some in NX 12.0.2.
To recap the video, let’s look at adaptive milling, which is new to NX 12.
Adaptive milling uses a large axial depth and a small radial depth of cut.
NX will calculate the best path to maintain constant chip thickness. It will also wrap the tool either up and over the part, or around the material. Adaptive milling uses helical entry inside of pockets, and a radial entry from outside, as demonstrated in the video.
As Tony demonstrates, it’s faster to run an adaptive mill followed by a rest mill, rather than the traditional cavity mill and rest mill. The time saved machining in this video was nearly 7 minutes.
In bottom-up milling, the tool will cut down to the first cut level, then work its way up to the previous cut levels. By working its way up the three-dimensional geometry, the tool is reducing the rest milling operations’ cuts.
After running this type of adaptive milling, Tony has saved an additional 7 minutes.
NX 12 now has a pillar cutting option. Why is this important? If an operation is cutting down a pillar, it could potentially create a steam of material that can break off and jeopardize your tool life. A pillar cut allows the operation to detect if a pillar has been created, then cut it down using a helical motion.
Here are a few other items related to adaptive milling that Tony touches on in the demonstration:
Would you like to see a Snackbyte video tutorial about a specific functionality in NX CAD, NX CAM, Solid Edge or Teamcenter? Send us a Tweet @prolimglobal or leave a comment below!
