Lesson 3 - Import, Stock, Machining Prep

00:08

Welcome to lesson 3 of our FeatureCAM Standard milling class.

00:12

In this lesson, like the previous lesson, we'll be importing a solid model and programming features directly from that model.

00:20

However, in this lesson, we won't be able to simply recognize 2.5D features off this model to completely program the model.

00:28

As we'll see, we have another surface that can't be simply defined by 2.5D feature, and we'll have to use some of our surface milling strategies available to us in FeatureCAM Standard.

00:39

With that said, let's quickly move through the first three steps of our workflow.

00:44

Importing our solid model, setting up our stock, and handling machining prep.

00:49

To start things off, we'll go with a milling setup.

00:52

Inches are unit of measurement, wizard, my configuration, create new document.

00:58

Similar to our last exercise, we can close out of the stock wizard that is initially opened for us since we'll be importing our own solid model.

01:07

In the previous exercise, we simply dragged and dropped our solid model into the user interface.

01:13

This time, I'm going to do it the longer way just to show you another way to do it.

01:18

I'll go File, Import, and then I'll select the Standard 3 parasolid file.

01:27

As you probably expected, as soon as I hit "Import", we’re met with the Import Wizard.

01:35

Similar to the last lesson, let's quickly move through this wizard to establish the initial setup location and stock size.

01:43

First, we'll define our Z direction by picking either two points along a vertical edge, or in this case, I want to show you the second option, "Align Z perpendicular to a horizontal surface".

01:54

It's just what it sounds like.

01:57

I'll hover over the corner of this top face until the entire face is highlighted green.

02:01

Select it, and then confirm that my Z is pointed perpendicular in the direction that I want, upwards.

02:09

Again, if it were pointed downwards, I can simply toggle reverse Z until I have the Z direction defined as I want.

02:17

With our Z setup, we can move on to setting up our X direction.

02:20

This time, I'll just use the pick two points option.

02:24

Confirm that X is pointed in the correct direction and move on to the stock face.

02:29

For this part, looking at our solid model, the easiest thing we can do is go from a block stock.

02:35

This time rather than entering in specific stock dimensions, let's compute the stock size from this part.

02:41

You'll notice that as I select compute stock size from the size of the part, we see our imported data values.

02:48

We have an option to extend our stock in the X, Y, and Z's positive and negative directions and that will give us our total stock size.

02:57

For the sake of simplicity, let's not add any extra material and leave our stock size as computed.

03:04

Next, let's simply just place the setup in the center of our part on the top face, selecting X indicate that we will not be using multi-axis positioning.

03:14

And then we're finally done with our Import Wizard.

03:17

By now, hopefully, this process is starting to get repetitive and you're really getting in the groove.

03:22

With our setup placed, our stock setup, we just have two remaining things to do to finish out our machining preparation, selecting our tool crib and our post processor.

03:32

Make sure that the Basic tool crib is selected like in previous exercises.

03:36

And this time, make sure to activate the Mazak post processor.

03:41

It should be in your files as Mazak.cnc.

03:51

With our part imported, our stock sized, our setup location placed, tool crib indicated, and postprocessors selected, we're ready to start programming features.