Machining the Car Prototype

Top Region

To begin the top region, first set up OP020 and then suppress everything to do with machining the bottom region of the car, including operations, mill volumes and datum planes. This is to make it easier to visualize what you are working with.

The coordinate system (CS1) should be set so the long axis of the car is pointing in the Y direction, with the coordinate system located at the top of the work piece as shown below, for the same reasons as before (faster traverse in the y direction).

The mill volume for the rough and profile operation should encompass any geometry that was not reached when the car was upside down.

After rough and profile:

You cannot set up a contour surface operation that does the whole upper surface at one time. (You can, but the Phoenix router will not accept a file greater than about 200k). In order to keep the file size down, create two NC sequences, the main body and the front and back.

After machining the main body surface:

After machining the front and back:

You now need to post process all the .ncl file (apt code) into g codes for the CNC router. Select CL Data – Post Process and select your .ncl file. Select Done from the PP Options menu and select the appropriate post processor. It probably will be labeled UNCX01.P52 and when you put the mouse over this selection, you should see CNC Router in the dialog box.

After selecting this, the system will generate the g code file (output as a .tap file on disk) and give you some statistics on the file. If you get the following “Terminate the FIL File ERRORS!” simply ignore this message. Write down the machine times (cycle time) to compare with what Pro/E gives in the manufacturing.inf file.