We are quoting a off center parabolic reflector.
Customer supplied a equation. We need to machine to "surface error to be within 25 micron (meter?) RMS".
"Surface roughness to be less than 3.2 micron"
If I model the curve and revolve it to cut the surface, would the surface still 100% follow the equation?
What happen when I export it to STEP, Parasolid for MasterCAM?
How much deviation, if any, between the equation and exported surface?
Good question. SOLIDWORKS does have a parabola sketch entity and SOLIDWORKS base units are meters and uses double precision in it's calculation of geometry. It also uses parasolid kernal, so would think that parasolid also supports parabolic curve geometry. Don't know about step, if it supports parabolic curve. So I would think that parasolid would give best results.
I did a test by creating part with parabolic face. Round trip the part to parasolid and back to sldprt. Ran compare geometry against the round trip part and original. Geometry was identical. Did the same thing with step round trip and compare geometry did find differences.