CAM Mode In WorkNC V21 (Introduction to CAM keywords..)

Hello Again..
Happy holy month of Shravan to all of you. The climate here in Pune is at its best as its raining continuously. It is the time when we roam across the various tourist places along periphery of Pune.

Now lets come back to our tutorials where we left off last time. in this thread we will see how to use the CAM mode of Work-NC. First of all we will see what a cam mode window looks like.

User Interface In CAM Mode

Basically you can observe there are four different section at the left side of the screen. 

1. Preparation Window
2. Part Geometry Window
3. CAM Entities Window
4. Toolpaths Window

1. Preparation Window: The icon shown by the "Enable Active Preparation Mode" is used to switch from CAM mode to CAD mode. It enables us to draw boundary curves, new surface addition, define the geometry of model. For now simply keep in mind that this icon is used to switch from CAM to CAD mode and we will see it in details in next post

2. Part Geometry Window:  Here we can see the actual geometry we have selected for machining under Geometry To Machine tab. Also we see and edit he Stock Model for the part on which we are going to do machining operation. 

Under the CAM Axis tab we get to see the Machine Zero Position or Machine Origin where the operator sets the zero while setting the job on machine. Also we can see the list of UCS we have created in CAD mode. 

• To activate a particular UCS we have to right click on the name of that UCS then select Apply as Machine Axis.
• Then again right click on UCS name and select Activate. (Note: Remember the UCS will not get activated even you don't activate it after applying it as Machine Axis)

3. CAM Entities Window: This window shows the list of various CAM entities such as surfaces, curves, points below single tab. Two important tabs here are Curves and Points.

• The curves imported from CAD mode are enlisted under Curves tab. To create a new curve you can right click on curves tab and then the Curve Creation Wizard opens up.
• Also we can create new points by right clicking on the Points tab and the Points Creation Dialog box opens up where we can create points by various methods such as three points or circle selection.

3. Toolpaths Window: This window shows the no of Toolpaths we have generated in our process. You can renumber them according to sequence of operations, edit them, copy or move them, set various parameters regarding them form here. We will see that in details in next post. 

• Also we can see the for which Toolpaths postprocess has been carried out as shown in pic above the Postprocessing of toolpaths 1,2,3 & 4 is carried out and it is shown below the toolpaths as "Concatenated Postprocess 1234" (Note: Postprocess means the the output of the various toolpaths merged into a single file using various G & M codes which can the read by the machine controller. It can be a .txt file on most of the controllers. )

That's all for this post. Next time we will see different toolbars in CAM mode, Toolpath strategies, Creation of Workzones etc. 

Thank you reading the blog. Keep visiting for more updates. Keep sharing.