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Chamfer Milling A Profile in Catia

M4573RMZD

New member
Alright....I'm gonna throw this out there. This is about Prismatic Machining in Catia. In a nut shell I have a rectangular part (doesn't matter how big) Around the top edges of the part it has a .025" x 45 Deg. chamfer. For all the people who use metric....it has a 1mm x 45 deg chamfer.

There must be a way for Catia to machine a chamfer along a profile.

Any Ideas??

I appreciate you time and efforts

Thanks
 
Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I agree there are special tools (Chamfer Mills) which can run along a profile or contour.

But think about it...I have a Ø.250 chamfer mill with a 45° angle. I want to create a .025" chamfer along the edge of the part. What I am doing now is manually calcualting the correct offset of the tool in order to give me the desired chamfer, creating a profile using a sketch and then using the Profile contouring command running the tip of the tool along that profile. This is not the most efficient way to program this chamfer.

This is the way that I have been doing it. I'm reaching out to the Catia community and asking if Catia has a specific command or by selecting a particular method within a specific machining strategy which takes away the manual calcuation as well as the sketching of a specific profile in order to achieve the chamfer along the edge.

Other CAM softwares have this function ie: Mastercam and SolidCAM, Fusion 360, Siemens NX Machining (im sure the list goes on and on)

This is a very common thing and for Catia not to have such feature really does not make sense. Think about it guys...chamfering and edge breaking is one of the most standard things in machining. It's almost like drilling. It's not just for outer profiles...its for holes and pockets and everything in between.

Imagine calculating the offset and creating a profile to chamfer 8 or 9 different features just to have the operator come back into the office and tell you that he is not going to be able to use the Ø.250" chamfer mill because the other guy is using it but he could use the Ø.1875" chamfer mill. That means all the profiles I created need to be redone. In other programs I simply select the different tool and toolpaths are automatically regenerated

This is why I am almost certain I'm missing something....I must be missing something.
 
I'm not a machinist nor am I an CNC programmer, so I'm afraid I can't help you with your chamfer problem Andrew. From what I recall from my CATIA V4 days, all it took was defining the size & shape of the cutting tool, and then just select the geometry on the model. From there, CATIA calculated the tool path pretty much automatically. I image the latest code is even easier!

Have you asked your CATIA reseller or your local CATIA support folks? It seems like you just need a little training (or demonstration) to get you going.

This web site is probably not the best place to ask NC questions. A much better place is the COE website; They have a great Discussion Forum that includes a section for NC programming. Some of the NC members are very active and helpful in sharing their NC knowledge and experience! It's worth the effort to signup (the last time I checked, it's free) www.coe.org
 
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Thanks for the response one again.
I have a subscription on the Companion 3DS learning space and I have taken the NC training course and no-where is this chamfering strategy covered. In fact I have purchased many of the courses on the online companion and of all the courses I have taken the Machining bundle was the worst of them all. ( So was the stress analysis courseware) I wouldn't say they are a complete waste of money but they are structured very very poorly. Other courses are very well structured like the Catia Fundamentals courseware (which comes with the Mechanical Design bundle) as well as the Knowledgeware and the Surfacing courseware. By the way the Catia Companion Courses are not cheap. But you will learn alot from them.

During my recent web searches on this topic I did stumble on the COE website and low and behold this topic is covered. I was correct you need to do the calculation yourself. Then I was wondering about the corner radiusing with a corner radius tool as I did not see the Corner Radius tool layout in Catia and this once again needs a work around. The work around for corner radius is almost virtual and according to what I have read the result cannot be simulated because you cannot customize any of the standard tools within Catia to give you such a shape. You have to visualize it in your head and then make reference to a user representation tool so that during simulation you can see if your tool is on the right path but you will no receive a result. I need to try it out first but that’s a whole Sunday afternoon where other programs have that functionality built in.
I have noticed in Catia that there are ALOT of things which are considered standard which require these wasteful work arounds. It’s ok because I look like a genius compare to the guy next me. It keeps my brain super sharp. But I'm not the guy buying Catia for me to work on. It's my boss, and as soon as he gets a sniff that the same job could have been done in half the time for a fraction of what Catia costs (error free) well....need I say more??
Catia must adapt in an age where programs are requiring less input from the user to create the desired result or be rendered useless. In fact I believe that Catia V5 is phasing itself out. V6 will be the future but that’s a whole other thread on another discussion board.
 

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