Hi my name is Daniel Rogge I'm one of
the people here at Tormach working on
PathPilot and I'd like to talk to you
today about some of the conversational
features in the PathPilot mill
interface
so we've got a number tabs along the front
here. You'll notice one of them says
conversational. These are kind of the
ways to program the machine to do tasks
that are simple enough that you don't
have to go to CAD/CAM don't have to
design the thing in a solid modeling system
and then do the toolpath design in CAM.
If you click on conversational, you will see we have
several tabs up along the top here so
we've got ways to generate facing g-code,
profile, circular, and rectangular pockets.
We can do drilling and tapping straight
here including bolt-hole circle patterns
We got a thread milling and then we've got an
engraving tab. And I'm going to go
through these relatively quickly, but
I'll talk one by one about the features
associated with each one of them and
we'll do a couple examples.
So I guess
we'll just start in order here the
facing tab is for facing off stock. These
entry fields are common to all of them
so we can give this a title here. Face
one or you know widget whatever we want
to call it. It'll take your work offset
that you know G54 through G59.3 all the
different work offsets you could be
using some people call that your zeroes.
Right. Takes the tool number. I have a
Fly cutter's tool 10 here and you'll
notice when i type in tool 10, it'll take the
tool table, the diameter from the tool
table, and it gives me kind of a hint and
saying look 70-percent step over on that
tool is 1.75 inches
It'll take in a feed right taking a Z
feed rate that separates so that's the
you know when you hit the clear plain
the Z feed, or the motion from the clear
plain to the Z start happens at the Z
feed right and here we have a clear
plain be you know if you have toe
clamps or anything to skip over clear
plain would be where you'd program that
height above the height of the workpiece
and then on the specific tabs this is
specific to the facing routine specify
the geometries be the geometry the
workpiece i typically program my part 0
at the rear left hand corner of the
workpiece so i've got x start of 0 so if
i hit enter it will transfer over to
this next value and hitting Enter to get
between fields is nice but it also helps
us validate the value you put in so if
I've mean to type in 3.25 and I accidentally type in
some nonsense like that hit enter
we'll see an error message and it will
say oh invalid x-value sure go ahead and
now let's just say our stock is three
inches long and maybe 3 by 2 so here we
have a Y end of minus 2 inches step
over here we already mentioned we've got
this fly cutter in here but it let's
say we had something smaller just like a
and all half inch end mill I think tool
to maybe a half-inch and no why start at
zero will do a why end of minus two so
we've got something that's 3 inches long
by 2 inches deep
why start i'll face this down to a
four-story see start our faces down
towards the end value of zero so why
start will be a hundred thousand apart
we'll just do it 11 pass
let's say step-over of the pretend we're
using half inch tool so the toolpath
looks interesting here we step over of
half an inch
go ahead and post this thing to the file
here it asks us to name it and save in a
different folder here go ahead and save
it under my name
we've got my folder and save you'll see
it goes ahead and generates a tool path
here so there's our toolpath you see the
extent that actually goes a little bit
further because what it wants to do here
is it wants to enter the workpiece in
this Z direction so it's not plunging
directly into the workpiece actually
offsets a bit plunge in a safe distance
that go ahead and cut the part that's
face
let's go over profile here we'll do some
examples here a little bit busier page
but same idea we assume that we've got
some piece of stock some raw material
that we're starting with in this case so
i'll go ahead and assume it was the same
thing so X start of 0 for the stock
accent of 3y started 0y end of minus 2
and then it allows me to define a
profile on it saying we've got something
roughly a quarter inch smaller you know
. 25 2.75 and I could put a radius on
this if I want and you know if you're
used to any kind of fuckhead camp
software some of this will be fairly
straightforward we do circular profiles
as well i'll show you an example of
rectangular profile and we do our best
to create a constant to length
engagement
excuse me constant tool engagement tool
path here so i will see when we post
this thing here we're taking a fairly
constant tool engagement we've got here
at the corners you can see it takes an
extra little cut so get the radius in
there correctly and if we want we can do
this and you know all one pass or we
could in fact go back in here and say
that that RC depth of cut would be
excuse me . 25 go ahead and repost this
I'll just override it and now we'll see
it does this in two separate passes
pocket is fairly similar both
rectangular and circular pockets i'll
just give you an idea here with the
toolpath looks like here and it'll uh
try to spiral in and get your circular
pocket once again this is great for
simple geometry if you have something
very complicated obviously you want to
go to cad cam but this is an easy way to
get going gotta drill tap pattern here
this is some values left in here before
delete this excuse me clear all of these
we can either enter and values by hand
so you know
0010 that kind of thing
excuse me or we can do a circular
pattern generation so here I've got
maybe five holes that I want to state
six holes this gives you a star tangle
this is off of the three o'clock
position is a diameter of the bolt-hole
circle in the center this is a nice
little feature here a lot of times
you'll want to use the spotting drill
before you for the drill so you can
specify spotting tool number on to
leaven happens to be my spotting drill
will say we'll go a hundred that deep
with the spotting tool and then the rest
of this is all your strategy for
drilling sopek drill 200,000 sea
startsea and stuff like that and go
ahead call this drill circle and we're
going to post this we'll see what we get
so there it is there's our little drill
circle six holes
look at the pattern tab you'll see that
the values that are used for those six
holes have been pre-populated the
pattern which is kind of nice because we
can go to do a tap and retain those
right so so be a way for us to to tap we
can tap with the peculiar tapping hand
we can tap with just our standard
tension compression tapping head you'll
notice if we're tapping is a quarter
twenty whole 20 threads French it will
go ahead and change your pitch
accordingly dwell here is for the
tension compression tapping had some
people like to tune it in so we'll do it
. to second well basically says you over
travel by a little bit
there's more information about dwell and
tapping in tension compression and in
our tap and guidelines document you'll
see there's a little note appear
describing exactly what happens
nice thing about having this circular
pattern populate this table is that the
thread milling tab also uses this table
so thread milling we can do external
thread mills around a big search of the
boss we do an internal thread milling
this is using a single point thread
cutter here and let's say we're going to
go into a 38 16 so we'll do those six
holes that we made for drill circle will
go ahead and thread milling call it red
circle or thread mill circle whatever
you want to call it it does use the
diameter from the tool table here so to
to create the you know the proper tool
path so we definitely have to know
sure what might look like tool for here
has a pretty small diameter eighth of an
inch i don't actually have a thread on
the machine right now but I used to four
so that the the toolpath looks somewhat
appropriate we go ahead and post this
and take a look at what we get here so
here we've got this is the thread millen
and you actually see this multiple
passes in here right
and just to be clear if
if this tool for had a different
diameters like a one-inch diameter tools
you wouldn't be doing a thread thread
milling operation with that you try to
post that here and it's going to give us
a you know what we can't tap we can't do
it can't thread mill a hole that's a
three-eighths inch 16 fastener hole with
a one-inch tool obviously so this just
wanted to show you hear that thread .
page does assume that you've got the
diameter of your thread mill properly
entered in here so there we go there's
our there's our thread mill encode last
have here is in grave so engraving tab I
could you know Dan Montenegro is the
videographer hide and you say hi so
we'll type in his name here and we can
choose the font you can actually upload
your own fonts in here is anything any
truetype font should work you can upload
fonts on the file tab if we look here
engraving fonts and stuff to bring it
over from a USB Drive will allow you to
use your own truetype fonts but anyway
these the fonts that come in the system
here so we specify a height of the text
and a half an inch high and the the
lower left-hand corner here and we can
justify this in the center justify it to
the right clear distance stuff to cut
all that stuff we'll go ahead and listen
grave my name in here isn't very
creative but in any event that's what
you get there with the engraving tab one
nice feature of the engraving tab here
is that we can do serialization so i
might say serial number or something
similar and we can choose maybe
something that looks a little bit more
little fancier for certain number if i
if i type of value in here for serial
numbers start let's just go ahead and
say we'll start at zero actually just to
show you this one started 000 and
there's a little distinction if i go
ahead and and I post a file
just overwrite that engrave code is a
serial number you don't see anything on
the toolpath but if Iran this code it
would engrave ceiling I 1000 here and
then the next time I would run this code
it wouldn't grave serial number 001 and
then the next time 002 it so that allows
you to do serialization we do that
through a macro actually look at the
g-code here it's probably somewhere down
at the bottom
g47 is our serial number macro and it's
going to read in the current value that
serial number and you can assign that on
this page relatively easy right now it's
gonna stay current serial number 000 but
if Iran this code a few times and
hovered over it would say current serial
number is 011 if you want serial numbers
with five digits you know you can have
it started 14 for instance right but the
number of leading zeros the number of
zeros the the the total number you want
here would be specified by that and if
you just leave it empty no serial number
gets offended at all right so it's it's
the entirety of the conversation and
then i'll give you quickly i'll give you
a an example of how you might stack
different conversation files onto one
another right so we know that we did
this face that you're let's rename this
something a little bit more original or
savory to make some kind of race car
trophy right or whatever we're doing and
deliver to for this and we'll go ahead
and post this to the file sure similar
code that we post before we go back and
let's say we want to we want to then cut
out a profile that we face the top off
now we're going to cut a profile and
would you go ahead a pedophile we can
choose racecar trophy just depend that
to the file and now we have the two
together you see is superimposed on top
of whatever our first face and then are
your profile and we certainly go back
would put a pocket in the middle of this
thing here so we would then append this
to the file right so there's our pocket
right in the middle and you're probably
getting the idea here that we could take
anything we could we could go ahead and
append
to the file and that that would give us
that you know the composite file here so
that's an overview of the conversation
tabs and passed pilot the milling
interface the idea here is you know
you're not gonna be able to handle
everything that you want a machine with
this but the simpler tasks like facing
off partner squaring up some stock
should be much faster to do in
conversational then in cad cam and there
are a couple things like thread milling
and engraving that can be really clunky
and cad cam that's very nice to be able
to do right here at the interface we're
constantly looking for ways to improve
this so if you have any suggestions
please please feel free to email us at
path pilot at torlock.com thank you so
much