[sansbury]

So, I have a part that is held in a fixture as per the drawing attached. Grey is the fixture, blue is the workpiece held in place by a fixture clamp. The fixture is designed to be held in a vise with the lower left corner set to X0 Y0 so I can plop it in the vise, touch off, and machine away.

The DXF has the part drawn so its lower-left hand corner is X0 Y0. So in order for the toolpaths to be in the right place, we have to apply an offset somewhere. The Machine Setup option in the CAM tree *seemed* like the right place to do this. When I put in .3 for X and .93305 for Y, the little coordinate system arrows went in what looked like the right place up and to the right of the part. However, when I clicked to recompute all toolpaths, they didn't move. I ended up just moving the part on the drawing canvas so that its origin was where the fixture put it, but this feels like a hack. I could have programmed G55 to have the origin in the right place and then posted the toolpaths with work offset 2, but that also seemed like a workaround.

Is the machine setup option the right way to handle something like this, and if so, how would I actually use it?

[aldepoalo]

Watch this video and let me know if it helps....

[bobcad guy]

heres what I consider the easiest, and proper way to do it. If I have a part that is on a fixture, I draw a point on the x and y intersection that will be my desired zero. then I go to stock wizard, I setup the "machine set up 1" or the " machine setup 2 " if its the second op, etc. in this case, we'll use machine setup 1. I define the clearance plane, I define the work offset, and then I click on origin. once you click origin, a bunch of points will populate the screen. simply highlight the point that YOU drew before starting this process, and click on it. you should now have the system arrows on the point you drew. that now sets your machine setup 1 zero at that point. BEAR IN MIND, only the machining will be using that point as zero. if you attempt to add to your drawing, the zero will be where ever you have it set to draw. so the drawing zero datum, and the machining zero datum, can be two different places, and if you use another machine setup, you can set yet again ANOTHER zero datum edge, that will use THAT point to machine the part. so you can actually have one drawing, that has several datum points, without ever translating the part, or copying and pasting. each machine setup works on its own zero datum. also make sure when you set a machine setup datum, that the x, y, and z arrows point in the right direction. if you flip a part over and set a new datum, your Z system arrow will probably point down, because bob knows the part is upside down, so youll need to realign it to face up.