— ONGAA CAM

Although ONGAA CAM was designed to take advantage of ‘Assemblies’ with single body parts there are times where multibody parts are required.

ONGAA CAM can now isolate single bodies for programming and with the use of SOLIDWORKS configurations each body can be programmed as a separate part for machining.

This new feature uses the variety of SOLIDWORKS entities selected to determine is a body is to be included in the dimensions of the raw material or not.  With the ‘Ignore Bodies without Selections’ activated only bodies where Faces, Edges or Vertexes are selected will be used for geometric calculations.

Since ONGAA CAM is already ‘Configuration’ aware, creating a configuration (with no special changes) will allow additional programs to be created which are completely separate from any other configuration’s programs. This then allows each body to be oriented (for machining) independently of all other bodies.

ONGAA CAM will incorporate the configuration … Read the rest

Parts may require an alternate configuration to be created that reflects the part as it will ‘be machined’ rather that ‘as presented’.  One common situation for this is when parts are created either as multibody or with extra extrudes.  The extra body or extrude may be edge-banding for example which will be added post machining.  The ‘as machined’ configuration would simply suppress the feature (extra body, extrude etc) to reflect a part in its true geometry.

When parts require this additional (SolidWorks) configuration and these parts will be nested it is important that the master assembly also gets an extra configuration.  This is because the it is the assembly which drives which configuration will be set to active during the nesting process.

By default, assemblies set the part ‘Default configuration’ as the active configuration.  This will need to be changed.

In the assembly, Right-Click the parts in the tree and … Read the rest

Although most vertical routing/milling does not require changes in Z when it is required WoodWOP can be ‘hard to convince’ to do it without doing lots of calculations.

So what is the problem?

The primary limitation comes in how contours are defined.  In the XY plane, we can define lines and arcs easily and WoodWOP interpolates these when machining.  WoodWOP and the machine cannot interpolate any ARCS that are not on this plane.  But is can interpolate or follow lines that alter in Z.

With ONGAA CAM, contours in any plane can be selected and machined as long as curves are defines as splines.  ONGAA CAM will convert a spline into a series of geometry elements which simulates interpolation.

In this example, the sketch (a spline) sweeps through the material.

In ONGAA CAM, select a vertex to indicate direction of travel (any point closer … Read the rest

When Biesseworks opens a BPP file generated by ONGAA CAM it parses all the program lines to validate format and parameters.  If a parameter is wrong it will ‘announce’ the error.

However, Biesseworks will not always ‘announce’ other inconsistencies such as a ‘Tool’ not found unless you click the Update Graphics button.

When Biesseworks is asked to display toolpaths etc, it needs to check on the tool geometry to work out what it should display. Unfortunately if even a single process has an invalid tool entered it will not display any toolpaths or toolpath thicknesses.

To solve this issue, first click the Update Graphics button.  If there is an error, Biesseworks will announce it.   Find the process with the invalid tool name and correct it both in Biesseworks (to verify the correction)  and in ONGAA CAM.

To avoid this situation first ensure that the copy of the techdata ONGAA CAM … Read the rest