Vectric
Suffering Con-Fusion360
The Autodesk Fusion 360 seems to be suffering an identity crisis. It is acting like it no longer wants to be the choice of hobbyists. Fusion 360 is abandoning its “Hobbyist” license and is calling what remains a “One Year Personal Use” license. No indication that can be renewed on a year-to-year basis.
To me this “Cool Hand Luke” failure to communicate is a flashing beacon in the fog. “You hobbyists can play another year, but after that you better “pony-up” for one of our revenue stream licenses,” Is the message I read.
Could be they discovered too many “professional” users claiming hobbyist status.
That is not a problem for me to solve.
I must decide what is best for the 3D CAD drawing that I do. I have many other paid-up options. That means I already own them. Rhino 6 and Vectric Aspire to name the two main ones. I also own Pixologic Z-Brush which is not exactly a CAD but does produce quality 3D drawings and models.
I love working with Fusion 360. It is the more commercial Machine Tool CAD and has the built-in CAM for machine tool operations. Of course, it does far more than just machine part drawing.
I have decided to wait and see what Autodesk has done to F360 for the “Personal Use” license. It has been dumbed down and the number of “Open Projects” has been limited to ten. What that actually means is yet to be revealed. I never work with many “open projects”. I work on one at a time.
If it means I must store closed projects on my computer rather than accessible in their cloud server, that is perfectly fine with me. That is my preference and always has been. I do not need a cloud server to… Continue reading
The Siren’s Song
I have to admit to myself that I have run amok and spun off into the rocks along the shore of the barren hobby/craft islands for a while. Of course, that is figurative. I think I am still pretty much sane.
I am referring of course to my workshop interests and making tangible and valuable art and crafts. It was the song of the mythological siren creature that lured me off course. Maybe put me asleep. Its name is “3D Printer”. Ha!
Yep, I fell victim under its spell. I love design and making things and doing that with a 3D printer is very enticing. Continue reading
No Mistakes – Making My Point
I seldom, almost never make mistakes… HA! But I found one in my tool definitions for Vectric Aspire. Um… maybe I do make a few mistakes.
I use a very fine pointed, down to 0.003 tip tapered ball-end milling bits. Tapered ball-end milling bits are defined by their one side taper angle and the tip radius in the Aspire tool table. That was what got me. The tapered bits are identified by the manufacturer with total (combined) taper angle and the tip diameter.
So, what the maker defines as a 10-degree 0.005 tapered ball-mill is defined in Aspire as 5-degree taper bit with a 0.0025 tip radius.
I got the side angle correct but I was entering the full tip diameter as the radius. I realized the problem when I would define stepover as a percentage rather than specified absolute distance. The percentage calculation was showing twice the correct distance.
Therefore, Aspire was also calculating the tool path to be twice as wide as it actually was. That’s because that is what I specified.
Hmm… wonder how long I have been doing that!*
I am trying to imagine how that would affect the milling operation. Probably some dimensional errors, the program calculating the bit to be twice as wide as it actually was. With the tiny bits, there error would not be noticeable or of any importance. Pocket sidewall distance would be a couple of thou’ too small.
I think the biggest issue would be the stepover. If I wanted 20% it would be cutting… Continue reading
Milling Wax Adventure
The year is running out fast. I will soon have to say good-bye to 2011. This is the year (last Saturday actually) that I became 65 years old. Time enough for pondering that event, now to keep moving. Ha!
I did some machining of wax on the Taig CNC mill Saturday. I love machining wax (the hard blue kind). The wax is not good for creating real finished useful items but it makes excellent models for making molds and doing casting.
I spent the morning doing the design work in VECTRIC Aspire software. I was creating a Christmas ornament as a negative. I learned how to mirror and reverse the lettering and other “thinking inside out” processes in 3D design.
The afternoon was spent machining the design into the wax, using the Taig CNC mill. That was an adventure.
I haven’t run that machine for some time. The milling started out OK, but I got a couple of stalls and lost steps in the Z axis. The mill has never done that before so it was a surprise. I wasn’t pushing rapid travel or cutting speeds that hard either. Lifting the spindle and motor is fairly hard work.
The rapids are only set at 65 IPM and I was running about a third of that. So I ran through the software set-up and MACH3 warned me I was pushing the limit on pulses for the pulse generation frequency for which I had MACH 3 set. The Taig has twenty TPI screws so it takes a lot of very short pulses with 1/8th stepping (32,000 per inch) to get any speed from the drives.
That’s 32,000 per inch so at 60 IPM travel (keeping the math simple) that’s 1 inch per second requiring 32,000 Hz (32 kHz)… Continue reading
“Proofs” of Concept
I was doing some product research today. This is something I made in about five to six hours. I had been thinking of how I was going to make these all week. I just needed a good Saturday to give it a shot.
As the title indicates this is a proof of concept not a real project. I didn’t want to slow myself down doing all the pictures of the process. The process is still experimental so full disclosure can wait until a better time. I have my camera at the ready.
Long time readers know I have experimented with pewter casting before. Here is the LINK.
The “thumbs up” graphic is a 3-D rendering received free with the Vectric Aspire software. I used it to create the medallion. The finished result is seen in the first picture above. The picture was created within the software. I combined the thumbs up with some freelance drawing to form the disk. Actually in my opinion the disk is much thicker than it should be.
The edges of the disk did not come out well in the tool pathing. I need to find a better way to create the disk in the software. As this was a trial, I didn’t want to spend all day on the drawing so I accepted some imperfection in the edge rendering and moved on.
Next I had Aspire produce a roughing toolpath for a 1/8 inch ball nose mill bit. Then I had Aspire produce a spiral finish pass with a 5/32 inch ball nose. The disk is 1-1/2 inches in diameter. The aluminum (both pieces) is 1/4 x 3 x3 inches. The back plate is not machined in this test trial.
The machining was done on the CNC Taig mill. A… Continue reading