G'day Lozza,
can you explain 5 Axis for a machining pleb like me?
is it the following ?
tool moves in X, Y & Z planes (that's 3)
bases moves X & Y planes ?
Basicaly yes Hoony then the 4th axis can be the table spinning 360deg and the milling head moving through 180 deg over the table.A friend who kindly lets me loose in his toolroom, told me at a trade show there was the latest 6 axis it had a bed that turned 360 deg, tilted 90 deg each way from horizontal, and a head that did the same with a D axis. Took 18mins to carve out a big dragon right before everyones eyes. There is also a D axis(5th), best way to explain that is if you held your arm horizontal, cocked your wrist at 90 deg and pointed your index finger downward and moved it around that's a D axis.
Programming isn't that hard there are programs that can check the G code(the commands the machine understands) other programs that can make a virtual machining run(toolpath) that you can visualy see any problems. The real trick(for me anyway) is 3D modeling and dimensioning the helmet after that it's pretty simple import/export into various programs.
Yes Stew could be done with a scanner or a digitising arm(touches the item in reference points and interpolates the curves).
Billet YZ might be able to point out my errors with this.
