4th Axis helical cut

Hello Group,

I am trying to help our programmer at work on how to generate the g-code to cope the end of a 6" pipe for a "T" joint. We need to roughcut the end on a rotary 1st. The shape of the pipe end if the pipe was split and layed out flat would be a sine wave shape. Do we need to model surfaces, or just a 3-D spline around the pipe.

Thanks in advance,
Pat

You could program the sine wave (unrolled end profile) as a 2D contour operation and then from the Ops manager use Transform>Wrap Cylinder to wrap the toolpath back around the pipe and output that with a 4-axis post...

Although it seems to me it shouldn't be too hard to find a cutter with a 3"+ flute length and do the op on the rotary in two halves as two straight line cuts, turning the pipe over between... --ch

Thank you for the reply,


I guess we need to make sure we have a 4th axis post which I assume we have as we have done some rotary work.

There are many ways to do this job and we even thought about waterjet cutting the part.

Thanks again,
Pat