This weekend was very productive

I have finished work on floating license scheme and volunteers have begun testing it.

Licensing like that requires a lot of work on both the web side AND the client side. So a lot of things can go wrong and hopefully testing exposes all of the possible problems before a paying customer has the opportunity to face any.

Aside from cleanup here and there i have added the material search feature.

"Material" panel is now expandable and it is hiding a search field.
When you type anything into that field, material list right above will filter out items that contain the text being searched.
To clear search results user can just click the red x button to the right of the search field.

Here is how it looks:

You don't really need to click on the magnifying glass button as searing and selecting of material is done in real time as you type text.

In fact in many cases simply typing things like "D2" will select the material you need.

What's New:

• Material Search Feature
• Added several new machine profiles to the default machine list
  (When you install over existing installation, use machine import function to add them to your current machine list)
• Finished floating license module (pending testing)

What's improved:

• Added Aluminum 6061-T4 to materials list
• Fixed missing Aluminum 6061-T6
• Added floating pop-up box to pretty much all fields on the FSWizard screen
• Cleaned up various things.

For a limited time purchase any HSMAdvisor license at more than 15% discount.

We hadn't had a sale in quite a while, so i thnik it is time for one more to mark.....eh.. the very middle of the Summer!

It is July 15, and i just realized we are past half-way point and it is not long before summer is over.

Invest into software that takes "guess" out of your machine shop work!

I think it is time to reflect on latest changes to our HSMAdvisor and look at survey results.

Thanks to your input I was able to make changes that I believe addressed some of the issues you guys were having.

You can download and try HSMAdvisor for 30 more days here http://hsmadvisor.com/index.php?page=Download

This update resets your trial counter back to "30 days left", so if your old trial expired, you can use it for one month more.

First of all, I put all of the available overrides on plain sight. Now you do not need to expand a panel to access speed/feed overrides.

I also added cutting speed and chipload to the collapsed view.

Machine Panel now has  Max RPM on collapsed view.

Gages panel now is not expandable and has 

Up to now people who wanted to use HSMAdvisor Speed and Feed Calculator on their Windows 8 machines had to install .Net Framework 2.0

I have decided from this point on to supply HSMAdvisor in both .Net versions.

As much as i would like to move completely to 4.0, too many people still run archaic versions of .NET framework.

I also fixed quite a few other things in this update.
So, if something looked wird before, it now should be fixed.

Edit: I have added a fix for metric taps in version 0.777

Happy April Fool's day!

Seriously though, i have just published another update.

This update adds a floating Speed and Feed mini-window that stays on top and displays most relevant information to help users with populating S&F values on their CAM software.

To show/Hide this window, click the red-and-white "Float" button in the status bar.

Upon right mouse click on the floating window you can choose what kind of information you would like to display in there.

Also one bug was fixed where when no machine was selected from the drop-down list, deflection and torque limits were not firing for milling and drilling tools.

But wait! There is more!

I will not open all my cards, but right now i am working on a massive update to HSMAdvisor's Tool Database.
Keep tuned in.

This update is mainly a bug fix and has some usability improvements.

New Things

• Persistence in Threads Tab
  Now Threads Page will stay the way you left it when you shut down the program
• Persistence in column selection for Drill Chart for both the Treads Page and Tap Tool on FSWizard Page as well.
• Capture Wizard can now capture target windows with dynamic controls. (Still working on SprutCAM integration profile that required this feature)

Fixed and Improved things

• Tapping tools had a bug in metric mode. Now it is fixed
• Text color for selected row in myCut Database page is now white on blue background. Which makes things easier to see.
• Capture Wizard is now a lot faster and should be less prone to hang ups.
• Improved Machine Limits behavior
  Power Overload now causes feedrate to reduce.

In this tutorial we are going to explore different options and techniques when programming cutter movement.

Lets begin with a simple part shown in a drawing below.

Basically it is a rectangular piece 4.00x2.00
For the purpose of simplicity lets make the depth of our profile (z- dimention) 0.75"

We are going to use a 0.5" dia endmill, again because it is a very common size and is easy to do basic math with.

I took a liberty of puting locations for our part/toolpath, so it is easy to extract numbers from the drawing just by looking at it.

Notice the green rectangle. This rectangle represents the path that the center of the tool will have to take to produce the part with required dimentions.
The thing is: because endmills have certain diameter, the center of the tool must be always offset by its radius.

There are two ways of doing that.

Since surface milling is more than half of what i do for a living, I decided to share some of my tips on that topic.

Generally you want to create a continuous toolpath that does not change directions too often.

Changing directions slows the machine down and reduction in feedrate affects deflection of the cutter. Different deflection means you get gouge marks on your surfaces.

When you have a long narrow piece its better to go along the long side to save on time and machine wear.
Also going along the longest side reduces the number of direction changes you will have to make

When milling cavities you need to first rough, then semi-finish then finish.

Leave 15 thou after roughing, 3 thou after semi-finishing and finish to zero. All with progressively smaller tools.
5 thou stepover will give you very good finish on most ball mills
3-5 thou chiploads are very common for surface finishing.

Ball mill will always give bad finish on shallow areas- the center is not cutting, but dragging around.
Also straight portion of the flute acts as a wiper and reduces scallop that the ball portion creates.

This is why going from top to bottom is safer and yields better surface finish.

The closer the wall taper angle to the taper of the flutes the better finish you will get.

There is another reason for always trying to go from top to bottom.

When taking material top to bottom you engage stock closer to the tip of the tool.

It makes cut more stable. It is more safe because you are less likely to bury the tool in stock unexpectedly.
Do not go from climb milling to conventional UNLESS you need to save some rapid time.
Pick up only climb milling and you are good to go.
Changing from climb to conventional will cause tool to deflect away from the work on climb and into the work during conventional pass. You will see zebra marks all over your surfaces.

HEM is a relatively new term.

It means High Efficiency Milling. It only became available when constant tool engagement toolpahs became almost standard on most of the CAM software.

Unlike HSM that utilizes chip thinning effect, HEM relies on much larger widths of cut and thus chip thinning does not occur. What gives it its name is much higher material removal rate that would normally be possible.

When you are machining a pocket you are most often only milling at about 50% WOC. But nevertheless you need to calculate speeds and feeds based on the fact that the very first move and every corner will be full slotting action. Which means that the whole pocket needs to be machined at lower feedrate.

HEM uses constant engagement toolpths to make sure that this never happens and that Width of Cut remains optimal. Tool never needs to make a full slot so you can ramp up the feedrate as if you were doing outside profiling.

Here is a video of a 1/2" 3 flute endmill machining a 5/8" deep pocket in aluminum at full depth. Normally this pocket would have been machined in 2 steps at 150 inches per minute.

Using Constant Tool Engagement toolpaths we can go full depth at 0.175" stepover and 275 inches per minute.

The advantage of this method is obvious- Higher Productivity.

HEM is not ideal for all cases and each application merits its own method of machining, but its always nice to know more than one way to do your job.

Check this video out.

The whole thing is pretty impressive, but the best part starts closer to the middle of the video. At around 3:20 you can see the size of the machine. Truly amazing.

Note: TURN YOUR VOLUME DOWN