This part will be run on a 3 axis vertical mill. It will require multiple operations. Op. 1 will be to clamp the block in a vise, face the top and rough the profile down to the .5" boss. Op. 2 will be to clamp in a vise laying flat and ball nose (scrub) the wall.
Op.3 will be the reverse.
Michael,
You are correct ideally a part like this would be done on a 4+ axis machine. However there are reasons that doesn't make sense for this part.
4+ axis machines make money running all day everyday, so pulling a part from one of them for this 1 part does not make $'s. This part is a hydroblock die for some sheetmetal and I will only need this one part. I have a spare 3 axis machine to run it on and while my operator has the 4+ axis machine running he can do this. Thank you for the video.
Grace,
Thank for sending this question. To be fair, this type of work would be a three axis part if it were machined following a contour in Z. If this part was running in a large production setting, using a custom ground tool may be faster since you could remove 2 of the operations and just attack it from one side. With that said, I did create a video showing a possible way to machine this part using SolidWorks CAM. The video is for reference, and the numbers may need to be adjusted for final machining. I have also used interactive feature recognition to show how you can manually define features similar to how you would in SW based on your previous post. I understand that our method in SW CAM is not identical to how you would do this in SolidWorks, but we also have a little more flexibility when dealing with areas where fillets or chamfers don't always meet perfectly.
Due to file size of the video, I have it shared through the link below.
Grace Watson.mp4 - Google Drive
Best Regards,
Mike