GibbsCAM Adaptive style roughing strategy alternative to Volumill?

Areo Defense said:

@Houdini16
It's odd you find it slow. Adaptive/HEM paths have been proven to time and again to reduce cycle times and tool wear. I would take a look at your feed rates again, perhaps the minimum feed rate is set too low. Another setting to keep an eye on is the distance the tool will stay down when position before it does a full retract and position.

Click to expand...

Houdini16 said:

If you havent used Volumill, it is different from all the other adaptives, It calculates from the part out to stock, not stock in to part. But the main difference it does is, instead of adjusting for engagement, it adgusts feed rates CONSTANTLY, this makes it quite slower than other adaptives you may have seen.

Click to expand...

Areo Defense said:

I've used volumill 2d and 3d, as well as NX adaptive cutting. Volumill seems to have more options to adjust but NX adaptive seems more intuitive and has always worked great for me.

in Volumill you have control over the min and max feed rates so if your paths are wildly slowing down then adjust the minimum feed rate but be careful of tool loading when as the angle of tool engagement increases. You should see cycle times in line with other adaptives if you set your parameters efficiently.

Click to expand...

Houdini16 said:

I use our old GibbsCAM 2012 and it doesn't have a MIN feed rate, I opened up our brand new version and sure enough MIN feed rate. Looks like its time to start switching to the newer interface.

Click to expand...

Areo Defense said:

Nice! Let us know how it goes!

BTW I am using Gibbs 22.0.42 and I see v22.0.46 was recently released. I haven't run across any bugs although when I'm messing around selecting/deselecting, ctrl/shift a lot of geometry, Gibbs will crash; not a huge deal because I save often. I also use NX 2206 and it rarely crashes but I save frequently in it as well. I'm a big fan of saving often, I grew up on early Windows so what else can I say? lol

Click to expand...

Marvel said:

I have VoluMill for CAMWorks, and one thing I have done on occasion is had a low lead in feed rate, so every time the tool repositions and starts its feed into the material, it was 5 or 10% of my actual XY feed rate and this has sometimes made my program time, depending on the operation, go from 15 minutes to an hour or more.

And as other has said, your entry length and floor clearance, adjust them. I found an .1" for Entry Length and .01" for Floor Clearance works great for me.

Smoothing radius as well, depending on your tool size and inside corner radius' if you have a small 5% smoothing radius along with the bad settings above, it'll pick out a corner and take forever. I typically keep it at 25%.

Click to expand...

Houdini16 said:

If you havent used Volumill, it is different from all the other adaptives, It calculates from the part out to stock, not stock in to part.

Click to expand...

Houdini16 said:

Ok, ill explain, most people don't notice this, but once you've used Volumill a lot and look at other HSM software you see the difference.
First watch a video of say, Fusion360 doing a HSM roughing strategy, you will notice that the shape of the starting strategy is the shape of the outside geometry, So if you had a rectangle piece of material and was cutting a circular boss in the middle, it will start cutting in a rectangular shape around the part feeding its way inward in that retangular shape until it get close to the part, then it will start to widdle away at the left over material slowly getting smaller and smaller left over shapes. You will also notice that it machines at the same feed rate the entire time.
Now with Volumill this is reverse engineered, I don't know who was first, but it's backwards, Volumill with this same part will calculate the round boss, and create cut paths in that shape all the way out to the rectangular stock shape, so when it cuts it start by removing all the corners making its way inward each time, but in the shape of the inner geometry, the circle, not in the shape of the rectangle like others. but when it get close to the inner geometry all the cust are in the shape of the inner geometry so it doesnt leave small islands to be removed.
If you really think about it with this scenario Volumill will have more rapids on the out perimeter of the part, which are longer rapids, and the other HSM paths will have more rapids on the inner of the paths, so shorter rapids,
this alone would make Volumill slower than other HSM calculators, BUT
what Volumill also does is it adjusts feed rates as it gets into tighter areas, look at your GCode or just what the feed on your screen, it changes/lowers the feed rates drastically throughout a program.
Most others dont do this, they adjust the tool engagement to minimize, Volumill adjusts the feed rate speed.
Not only does this make Volumill drastically slower, which is why they added the feature of "minimum feed rate" but it is also incorrect physics when cutting steel, because in tight areas it will decrease the feed rate to below what is acceptable for the surface feed of that material, causing problems.

Click to expand...

Houdini16 said:

Ok, ill explain, most people don't notice this, but once you've used Volumill a lot and look at other HSM software you see the difference.
First watch a video of say, Fusion360 doing a HSM roughing strategy, you will notice that the shape of the starting strategy is the shape of the outside geometry, So if you had a rectangle piece of material and was cutting a circular boss in the middle, it will start cutting in a rectangular shape around the part feeding its way inward in that retangular shape until it get close to the part, then it will start to widdle away at the left over material slowly getting smaller and smaller left over shapes. You will also notice that it machines at the same feed rate the entire time.
Now with Volumill this is reverse engineered, I don't know who was first, but it's backwards, Volumill with this same part will calculate the round boss, and create cut paths in that shape all the way out to the rectangular stock shape, so when it cuts it start by removing all the corners making its way inward each time, but in the shape of the inner geometry, the circle, not in the shape of the rectangle like others. but when it get close to the inner geometry all the cust are in the shape of the inner geometry so it doesnt leave small islands to be removed.
If you really think about it with this scenario Volumill will have more rapids on the out perimeter of the part, which are longer rapids, and the other HSM paths will have more rapids on the inner of the paths, so shorter rapids,
this alone would make Volumill slower than other HSM calculators, BUT
what Volumill also does is it adjusts feed rates as it gets into tighter areas, look at your GCode or just what the feed on your screen, it changes/lowers the feed rates drastically throughout a program.
Most others dont do this, they adjust the tool engagement to minimize, Volumill adjusts the feed rate speed.
Not only does this make Volumill drastically slower, which is why they added the feature of "minimum feed rate" but it is also incorrect physics when cutting steel, because in tight areas it will decrease the feed rate to below what is acceptable for the surface feed of that material, causing problems.

Click to expand...

Houdini16 said:

Are you using GibbsVolumill? floor clearance doesn't affect the speed, neither does entry length, it does add more unneeded movement though. Gibbs Volumill defaults at .01 floor, and you cant adjust the lead in length its automatically calculated, you can add more though.
The biggest factor I have seen using Volumill, in reducing the slow feed rate syndrome, increasing the minimum tool path radius, Yes it will make your tool not go as deep into corners, but it is faster.
The newer added "minimum feed rate" option I think will be key, ill have to start using our newer software with that option.

Click to expand...

Marvel said:

CAMWorks Volumill.

A floor clearance difference setting from .09" to .01" doesn't seem like much but on a decent size part, that setting alone can save a little bit of time. Image attached of a comparison of the same tool path with floor clearance setting changed from .01" to .09", as you can see the time difference is 10 minutes. Now this is a large part, you'll see a bigger time difference, but either way I ran 36 of these parts. That's a 6 hour difference over that one toolpath. This particular part had two large rough out tool paths between two OPS.

I don't run a whole lot of production, 36 parts is a lot to me and these were large parts, the full cycle time was close to 10 hours for the full part. But if you are running a large production of 100, 200 parts and that one setting saves you a minute, it adds up.

As far as lead in, I know a few people that prefer to cut their feed rate down 50% on their lead in, a longer lead in at a slower feed rate, it adds up.

Accumulatively now, these all add up to ways to cut a little bit of time off your cycle time if needed. I typically don't worry about a few minutes here or there, but some production shops cutting 1-2 minutes off a cycle time really adds up.

I agree with you and stated the same thing, increasing minimum tool path radius is a huge one, in CAMWorks its called smoothing radius. My default is set at 25% but know on occasion I've brought it down to 5% and it increases the cycle time noticeably.

Click to expand...

Houdini16 said:

Thanks for your time, yeah I don't know why anyone would use a high setting for floor clearance, Sorry, but I would say .01-.02 is fine, if your doing larger than that, you just don't understand what the parameter is for.
Same with entry exit extensions, unless you have a shit saw or incompetent workers who cut your raw saw stock way to big sometimes, or they cut the hand cuts from a auto saw way to big. you shouldn't need more than a .1 gap for lead in lead out.
Our worst manual saw cuts are less than .05"

Click to expand...

Houdini16 said:

Thanks for your time, yeah I don't know why anyone would use a high setting for floor clearance, Sorry, but I would say .01-.02 is fine, if your doing larger than that, you just don't understand what the parameter is for.
Same with entry exit extensions, unless you have a shit saw or incompetent workers who cut your raw saw stock way to big sometimes, or they cut the hand cuts from a auto saw way to big. you shouldn't need more than a .1 gap for lead in lead out.
Our worst manual saw cuts are less than .05"

Click to expand...