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Hi there. So this project is a 4-axis milling project where we are machining this, I suppose it looks like a clevis, from a single chunk of material. And there's going to be a lot of indexed work in this project as is often the case with these prismatic derived parts. There will however also be some continuous interpolated machining as well.

So we're mainly interested in covering the approaches for dealing with 4-axis milling as opposed to exclusively working in nothing but the 4D menu in this. Because obviously each operation has a very specific use case. Anyway, we're going to start on this now. Obviously I've opened the project in its currently set up form, which is also how you'll receive it.

And we are going to need to take a look at roughing out this part. However, before we do so, one of the things that I have found to be a particular problem, and I've had other people comment on this as well, is quite often the display gets rather busy with all of the machine movements and everything as well. So I'm also going to show you how to switch that off. So we're going to have a nice, clean, uncluttered display as to what's going on.

So to do so, I'm going to right-click on Machine Visibility, and under Machine Nodes, you can selectively switch off each of these parts. So I'm going to turn off Schema, Axis Z, Axis Y, Axis X, Tail X, and there is another one hidden just down here which I'm also going to switch off. So all we have left is Table Axis X, which is that white block, and Axis A, which is the blue chuck. And that gives us a much, much cleaner view as to what's going on, and it means that we should hopefully have an easier time of getting this machining done.

So the first thing that we're going to need to do is I would like to rough out this part. So I'm thinking that we can use an indexed roughing waterline approach for this. So I'm going to add an operation, but because there's going to be quite a few different operations throughout this project, I'm going to set the habit now of defining groups, which are like folders to give a nice, neat structure so we can group everything accordingly. And to do this, we go to Add Operation, and under Auxiliary, I define a group.

So I am going to rename this with Ctrl-R, and I'm going to call it Roughing, because that seems like a logical name for it. And now we're going to add the operation under 3D Entry of Roughing Waterline. And I don't know why it's chosen the smallest tool out of the tool table. That's kind of ridiculous.

So let's redefine that as the 10mm tool instead of the 2mm one, because obviously we want to do some proper roughing here as opposed to spending all day on it. Now, we don't need to worry about job assignment because it's only going to take away the stock material. We do need to take a look at strategy, because at the moment it's trying to cut all the way down through the part, down to minus 55, which is not really ideal. Not only do we have the aspect of tool reach to consider, but we also don't want it damaging and going through the part either.

So to get the best balance between clearing as much as possible and accessibility, I'm going to set that to go just below the center line. Because that means that when we flip it around, we can guarantee that everything's been cleaned up. So that will become minus 2 for now. I'm also going to turn on Step Up, because that's quite a useful thing to have.

Basically, that makes for finer grained steps, which generally gives the finishing passes a bit less work to do. Which, given that most finishing tools are a bit finer and a bit smaller, that's always a good thing. I'm also going to take a look in strategy, and ah, there we go. This is a roughing operation.

We don't want it taken down to absolute zero on our parts. So I'm going to set Radial Stock at 1 and Axial Stock at 1 as well. So let's try, sorry, I'm slightly sticky-throated at the moment, I do apologize. I am going to generate a toolpath and see what comes up.

Now, that looks pretty good, I have to say. So I'm thinking we can probably simulate that now and see if we're happy with the results. So let's click on Simulation, and we'll click on Run. And I'm just going to speed this up a little bit, because obviously there's a fair bit for it to go through, and we don't really want it to be taking all day doing so.

But so far, everything's looking pretty positive. We've not had any indicated crashes or anything. There is an interesting looking link coming up there in a second, that purple line that we can see. But generally, I think we're doing okay.

I'd say that's pretty positive so far. So I'm going to let that finish through now so we can just be absolutely sure that we're happy with the end result. We should be approaching the final pass shortly. There we go.

So that's come up all green, and that's generally pretty good. Quite often, what I have found, especially on these roughing waterlines, and it is something worth looking at as well, is there is an extra setting that is often required because people tend to find themselves getting really frustrated with a link that for some reason passes through a part of the machine or whatever. So I'm going to tell you about it now, although it's not strictly necessary in this particular instance. I'm not saying this to confuse you.

Just when I was originally planning out this project, I ran into it a couple of times, and yet on this run through, it seems to have not been an issue. But in the strategy. . No, not in the strategy.

It's in links and leads. I apologize. Quite often, if you find you get one of these purple lines just deciding to pass through a section for no good reason, that can be combated by clicking go up if farther and changing that listed transition value to something smaller, like 50 mil or whatever. It defaults to 500 by standard.

Either way, a bit of an unrelated side tangent here. Apologies if that seems confusing. But for the moment, we're all good. We don't really need to do anything more with this, aside from copy this operation and apply it to the underside.

So to do so, we are going to open up the transformation menu here. So click on the three dots down at the bottom here and turn on transformation. And we want to rotate this around the A axis. So we want to click on multiply toolpath.

And we are going to select the axis A position. And the multiply step is in this instance going to be the angle of rotation. Although if it's in a linear axis, it's the units of movement. So for me, it would be millimeters.

For other people, it might be inches. So I'm going to set this to 180 because it's degrees. So it's rotation. And we've got a multiply count of two, which basically means we've got the top and then we've got the bottom.

So I want to generate the toolpath and that gives us a really nice clean up operation of both sides. So we're now going to click on simulate and we'll speed it up a little bit because we pretty much know what we're going to be seeing here. But there we go. Let's just let that jump around a little bit.

There are a few other options on how you can present the machine visibility in this as well. You can also turn on what's called motionless mode where the tool will move around instead of the actual table in this instance. I tend to find quite often that can be visually confusing, especially when you're dealing with four and five axis parts as well. Because the tool will start coming from some very strange angles.

And of course, if you don't turn machine visibility off as well, your entire machine flips around to do so. But to show you the illustration at this point, I'm going to right click on here and turn that off and retry it. And we can see now how it's the tool that's moving as opposed to the machine. So again, the motionless aspect is purely to control whether or not the focal point of where it's machining moves versus where the actual machine itself moves around it.

But in this instance, I'm quite happy with the end result here. So I'm going to cut this video at this point and we shall see you in the next one where we start cleaning up some of the other facets of this part. We shall see you then.