Hi Guys,
After duplicating props manually in the time elapsed. I now finally build a 3-4 axis milling machine where I want to proove the entire prop digitizing and cutting concept on 1 single blade before I then do a tailor made router for the entire prop as discussed in the start of the thread.
I went with the DeskCNC software, controller and TP100 probe.
Gecko servo drives and a lot of second hand ahrdware I gathered over the 2 years.
In the pics. below is the result:
I have started digitizing my first propeller blade on both sides. At a raster of 1mm x 1mm, I come to about 66,000 points in the stl file, the system works well but I bump into a major issue.
If you look at the probe tip shown in one of the pics. As long as the probe is no top of the propeller averything goes fine, However when it touches the edge, it will try to go down till it reaches Z=0 setting. Doing this, the 2 mm tip will pass the edge and then a short segment smaller than 2 mm comes into contact with the blade edge, going further done, comes the taper and then a thiker 3.15mm stemm. Given that the software does not know about this, it always compensates only for the 2 mm diameter tip.
As a result, everything on the blade surface is fine however the edge shows a mess of 3 dimentionall stairsteps which can't be cleaned up in the Cad program.
I don't now the solution yet for this issue. My first idea is to fix a cardboard below the propeller surface and fill the gap between prop edge with some silicone or similar so as to have a vertical contact from the prop edge down to the cardboard surface. this should force the probe tip to always be in contact and avoid the wrong diameter compensation issue. Does someone have experience to share on this subject ?
Right now I am using Vector Cad Cam to edit the stl. files. Any experience to share for this program ?
Would Rhino have advantages ?
Thanks
Paraprop