[leito1489]

Hello everybody!

I'm a LinuxCNC user and I'm really happy with the way it behaves. I build camshafts for spare parts here in my country and I would like to know if there's an easy way to do the following:

What you see is a representation of a camshaft lobe and a cutter, let's say a mill, or a grinding wheel. I'm not an expert in using CAM software other than for turning operations, and I've never seen examples like this one.

What I would like to do, is to generate the profile for machining the lobe using a mill for example, but using only the movement of the rotary axis and the linear axis. So, camworks would be generating the G-CODE compensating the tool radius to mantain the tangential contact point all around the profile.

So, to sum up. I'm trying to use a Camworks, to test in LinuxCNC the possibility of generating a toolpath for a camshaft lobe that uses only one linear axis and one rotary axis, the tool is circular so this is doable compensating the radius, there's no need of a second linear axis for height compensation.

Do you think this is easy to do? I would love to test it, so I can rough my lobes with a mill in a machine that I can adapt by myself.

Thanks in advance for your help, and I hope I've been clear about my doubt.

Best regards.

Leonardo.

[RFB]

leito1489,

To simplify your example I would use a lathe with a C axis spindle and position X axis based on the cutter to lobe profile tangential. I'm not familiar with Camworks so I cannot provide any advice regarding that. Creating the X axis tool path will be quite a challenge if you do not have software for camshafts. You do understand that the tool path must be created for a specific diameter cutter.

In your CAD program imagine the circle that represents the cutter and the camshaft base circle both located on X axis. As the camshaft lobe is rotated then the circle that represents the cutter will move back and forth on X axis but, the cutter and the camshaft base circle center point will always be on X axis. Even though the camshaft lobe shape is irregular all of the tangential points will originate from the center of the camshaft base circle.

RFB