hi Everyone.
I was wondering if any of rhinoCAM users know about compatibility with 3 axis rotary CNC router. Thank you in advance.
I’m not sure what a “rotary” CNC router is - do you mean a 3 axis router with a 4th rotary axis added?
What is the brand of the machine/control? RhinoCAM’s postprocessor can be adapted to most comon controls/systems.
Helvetosaur. Hi!
I’ll attach a picture of it. As it was explained to me, it’s a 4 axis router without the X Axis on it. It only works with A, Y and Z. This engineer makes his own cnc’s. I believe every router he does is configured for Mach3 control.
the indications were to use Aspire to work with it, set the material stock as a cylinder and postprocess with mach 3 WrapX2A.
I’m thinking that I should be using rhinocam with a 4 axis configuration, but what we want to solve primarily is the custom material Stock. We’re thinking about 3d scanning the stock and do the toolpaths as needes so we can generate the pices more time efficient.
OK, pretty odd machine/setup. I guess Mecsoft would need to weigh in here as far as how the normal 3 or 4 axis operations can be used with this particular configuration.
If you are able to make a closed mesh with the scan data, you can export that as an STL and use that as the stock model in RhinoCAM. Or you can model something approximate in Rhino with the various surface methods if the object is not too complex and it’s easier to measure rather than scan.
Great! About the mesh, I’ll do that for sure.
The only thing I’m not sure is about the workaround for the wrapx2a worked in RhinoCam, as I have not found any resources online about it.
What I’m thinking about is to do an actual unwrap of the geometry in rhino using flow along surface and wrap it again.
As I told you before, what we want is not to use the aspire toolpath generator, because it uses the full cylinder as the material stock and we haven’t figured out another way more fficient of how to cut where we want. It’s always trying to cut a cylinder and we have tools for taking material faster thant the machine itself.
Sorry for my english. I’m trying my best to describe what we want to achieve.
Just curious, why is this configuration better than a standard XYZ 3 axis machine for the projects you are doing?
In the workshop where we have this machine, we do wood lathe works normally. But we’re starting to get into more complex pieces, like religious art or patterns in handworked lathes. So we’re using the rotary cnc as a proto robotic arm todo do them. https://www.instagram.com/p/DNcxWivOSLV/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
And also, I guess that is something the machine designer did in order to do a machine not as complex in itself. I’m not a robotics or automation engineer, but my guess is that it’s still 3 axis, so it’s fairly “easy” to do a machine with those features instead of dealing with a 4th axis.
Ah, OK, looked at the image closer plus your example part and now I understood - the tool axis is along the X-axis. It’s almost kind of like a vertically oriented CNC lathe with a live tool. I’m wondering if RhinoCAM Turn might not be adaptable to this - again have to consult with Mecsoft on this.
Cool surface textures!
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Thanks, Helvetosaur.
I’ll check the Turn to see if I can figure out a way to do this. I’ll let you know if I achieve something.