Feb 21, 2025
SkillBuilders ESPRIT EDGE “Speed & Precision: Milling with the Nexus Workholding Extension”

Webinar Summary

  • Enhanced Mill Programming: Learn how to streamline programming in ESPRIT by directly integrating Hexagon’s Nexus platform for quick access and easy importing of workholding fixtures.

  • Efficient Fixture Management: Discover how to rapidly select, position, and adjust tombstones and vises within ESPRIT, enabling versatile and flexible machine setups.

  • Advanced Machining Strategies: Explore practical applications of profit milling, automated pocketing, hole drilling, and freeform surfacing techniques to optimize toolpaths and machining efficiency.

  • Seamless CAD Integration: Understand the process of updating and maintaining CAD links within ESPRIT, enabling quick revisions without restarting your programming workflow.

Webinar Transcript

  • 00:04 So my name's George. I'm going to share my screen so you guys can see it. All right. And today we're just gonna be covering
  • 00:13 programming in a mill, um, and using the Nexus hexagon's newest release where you can bring in work holding directly into your
  • 00:25 software and download it very easily. So to start, I'll start with a default inch template. From there, like always we wanna load our machine.
  • 00:35 So we're gonna go load our machine, we're gonna use the D-M-G-N-H-X 8,000 gen two with the HS K 100 spindle,
  • 00:54 very large fun machine to set up. We're gonna hit okay. And the first thing I like to do is just turn off the machine so you can kind of see
  • 01:02 that spindle head in the table. And if you'd like, you can obviously adjust if you wanna see through, you can just set the
  • 01:11 transparency to different levels. So I'd just like to turn it off for right now. Next thing, let's load in, build some layers
  • 01:20 and load in our part stock and start, start to get an idea of what we're programming today. So I'll start with creating a part layer and a stock layer.
  • 01:32 Double click my part layer to activate it, I'm gonna go to file import and I'm gonna go to my folder set
  • 01:40 where I've got a cylinder head. We're gonna program today. So import is new, part is checked. So when I click open, it's gonna ask me if I wanna do CAD
  • 01:50 diagnostics on this file. I click yes, the part is already defaulted as a um, new part as well. So next I'll activate my stock layer, go to file
  • 02:02 import and this time I will import in the stock, stock case casting, sorry for the cylinder head uncheck import is new part.
  • 02:20 All right, so now we've got our stock and our part all. So we're gonna go over here to part set up.
  • 02:37 And our part is already defaulted, right? 'cause when we opened it, we said import is new part. We're gonna say our stock is a solid
  • 02:45 and we're gonna choose that solid. If you wanted to, you could apply an offset and put a stock amount on all the walls on if you wanted.
  • 02:53 That's not something we're gonna do with this file. Yeah, let's see what's going on. It says there's an issue with it. There it goes.
  • 03:04 Fixed it for me, right? So I hit, okay, so now my stock and part are set up and I can turn off my stock and go on from there.
  • 03:15 Next we need to go into our machine setup and build our machine setup, right? So to do that we would usually need to have fixtures.
  • 03:25 And if you already have fixtures on your floor, you might not have them built yet in the spray edge.
  • 03:30 So I'm gonna come up here to the Nexus button and once I click that, it's gonna open the Nexus platform for me.
  • 03:39 And right now you have work holding and 3D whiteboard. Think of 3D whiteboard as a cloud-based sharing system where you and other coworkers
  • 03:50 or people that need to approve your programs or files, they can review them in here. This is cloud-based and thus your material would be held on the cloud.
  • 03:58 If you start using that work holding is what we're gonna be focused on. So we're just gonna show you some
  • 04:03 examples inside the work holding. You'll open it up and the content catalog will show up. You can filter and search.
  • 04:12 I could filter by types and by brand. I know that the table on my machine is a 800 by 800 millimeter.
  • 04:22 So I'm just gonna type in 800, see what I get. I have some options for tombstones right here. I'm gonna select this tombstone.
  • 04:31 I can just click the checkbox here and add it to a content list I want to download later or I can just click this box right here.
  • 04:39 So I'm gonna click that and it's gonna download the file for me, right? So I can come back over here and click fixture
  • 04:47 and in my downloads folder will be that set up. There we go. Easy enough. Next I need to add an actual vice fixture
  • 04:58 to hold onto my part in stock. So I can, with this tombstone selected, I'll go back to fixture, but I don't have a fixture downloaded yet.
  • 05:07 So I can come back up to the Nexus platform and search again, say, what am I looking for this time?
  • 05:14 Let's see if I just look up vice, right, it's gonna show me some vice options. There are tons of options, right?
  • 05:24 I can also filter by brands. I'll search, maybe I want a jerk jerkins, right? Load more. I can search by work holding type.
  • 05:40 I can say I want a single vice, right? If I search for a different brand as well. So I can say, Hey, I want a Curt, I need
  • 05:58 to turn off the Jergens clear all now I can see all my cur vices show up, right? So let's just look for the Jins right there
  • 06:14 and see what we have. Perfect. We've got the five CV, 13 0 4 5 right here. And we've got the NY jaw, right?
  • 06:31 So if I just open this one up and click download, I can use this one for the programming of my part.
  • 06:38 So I come back over here and I'm gonna say fixture and I'll load this vice. The fixture will show up looking like that
  • 06:48 and I can rotate it around the Z so that it's positioned correctly for the part I'm doing. I can also just copy this one
  • 06:58 and paste it to the FA one as well. So now I have two and then I can shift this one down and Y.
  • 07:06 So now I have two vice setups right now I can select one of them to load my work piece onto
  • 07:15 my work piece loads like that. So I'm going to rotate around the X like that. Before I continue, I'm gonna click okay
  • 07:27 and make sure on my part side, the reason my work piece loaded, twisted like that is because my Z axis is not correct for
  • 07:36 how I'm gonna actually program the part. So to start, let's select this face and go to manipulation and click align Z.
  • 07:46 All right. So from there, now my Z is out of my part. I can start loading this into my machine setup again.
  • 07:54 So 'cause I clicked cancel on adding the work piece, but then I can now add the work piece to this fixture.
  • 08:04 Hold on. My stock was rotated out. We just need to reselect it. Let it fix it. There we go.
  • 08:24 So now when I add the work piece should correct it, it doesn't, but we will fix that in a second.
  • 08:31 So I'm gonna shift it out in Z. Let's go five inches right now we can turn that off, right?
  • 08:39 And then I will select this bottom face. I don't know why it rotated out.
  • 09:07 There it goes. So I'll select the bottom of my stock and then I can select the top of this jaw edge
  • 09:19 and then I can make those. So now they, when the jaws closed, you should get this section gripping on the part.
  • 09:27 And if you want to go lower, you could as well. And now I can shift the part down in X.
  • 09:34 So I'll say down three inches just to get it more in the middle of the table, maybe four inches and hit.
  • 09:41 Okay. So now my part should be getting held by the part or by the jaws in there. All right, so now I'm ready to start programming.
  • 09:56 I'm gonna turn off the stock layer. All right, the first thing I want to do is face the top of the part.
  • 10:02 So I'll select the face and I'm gonna go to features. I'll create a layer called features just to organize my part,
  • 10:14 right? And in the features tab I'm going to select the face and I'll click auto chain. It's gonna give me four chains.
  • 10:25 I only need one of 'em for the top face. I just need that one so I can delete these other three.
  • 10:32 I want to create pockets for this. So I select the face and hit the pocket button and the features tab, it's gonna create a pocket there,
  • 10:42 pocket there, pocket there. Next I can create all the holes on my part and any other sections that I wanna program.
  • 10:56 Let's say I want to program this side as a face. I can just select it auto chain and then delete the additional features that I don't need.
  • 11:05 So again, this side hit auto chain and then find the three features that I don't need. What auto chain is doing is it's automatically chaining all
  • 11:15 the edges of that face. And so since these faces have these ports, we can just delete those 'cause we don't need them as part
  • 11:23 of our feature set for facing. Next, I'll select the whole part and come up here in the features to hole
  • 11:29 and let it find all the holes. So anything up under four inches and over zero inch, it's gonna be found.
  • 11:38 As long as the hole has 270 degrees of a circle, it'll be found combined. Coaxial hole means that if it finds one hole
  • 11:46 that goes all the way through with the break, it'll combine that. As you can see here, picture shows you yes,
  • 11:51 picture shows you no as well. Propagate hole faces means it's going to allow you to, it's gonna search and find more detail for that hole.
  • 12:01 Even if you didn't have those faces selected. Active work plane only, we want no. If we had, yes, it would only find holes
  • 12:10 that this work plane shown on the screen right here. Blue could be done on split custom holes. Yes, in case there are custom holes on the part,
  • 12:19 I wanna split them so that I can perform um, drill operations on each section differently. So I'll hit okay,
  • 12:30 I had just selected my part. So now we have all the whole features as well. So I'm gonna start with facing,
  • 12:38 I'm gonna add a new layer called operations and I'm gonna go to milling facing, I'm gonna default all I'm gonna say front facing.
  • 12:55 Let's see, I don't have tools loaded yet, right? So perfect. I need to load tools into my machine. I'll come over here, I'm gonna open a set of tools.
  • 13:19 Now we have a set of tools. So let's go back and we're gonna go to milling, facing default, all say front facing,
  • 13:33 large face mill, put some speeds and feeds on the part. Use previous stock. Yes, this is just gonna automate step downs on facing.
  • 13:45 We don't have a ton of material in this part. You don't actually need to do that because you know we're not doing a large depth of the cut,
  • 13:52 we're just taking the skin off the top. Strategy I'm gonna do one way, we want a real nice finish on the part step over amount's
  • 14:03 gonna be 34% and everything else looks good. So we'll let that build. Next thing we have the two sides, right?
  • 14:20 That one and that one. So with those two chains, I want a similar operation. So I'm gonna go to facing again system default.
  • 14:31 And this time I'll say side single face. We're gonna use the small face mill with some different speeds and feeds slightly
  • 14:43 different strategy. I just want one pass, just write down. So we'll hit. Okay. So from here, let's watch what we have
  • 14:59 so far for those two tools,
  • 15:26 I did see an error message down here about the step over of 50%. So on the single passes, we're not too worried about that
  • 15:33 'cause we're just doing a single pass. All right, so I'm gonna speed this up.
  • 16:10 We might need to adjust some of our movements if we add extra parts and we can see that later, right?
  • 16:21 So we've got that machined. Alright, next let's do our pocketing on the front face. So we're gonna go to milling pocketing.
  • 16:35 I can select all three and create what's called a parent operation. So I'm gonna default all and go up to general
  • 16:44 and say pocketing rough patch, yes, tool id. We'll use a large bull, no. And then we're gonna go to use previous stock.
  • 16:57 Yes, strategy is gonna be profit milling, hybrid strategy. It's not gonna matter too much in here, but it's a good start to have.
  • 17:07 Then we will say if we have slotting, let's go 3,503 with a hundred thw depth to cut. Otherwise we're gonna do
  • 17:17 5500, 5 5 and 200 here. Step over is gonna be 27%, we should be good to go there. We wanted a hel contained entry as well.
  • 17:36 We could do that with a five degree helix angle,
  • 17:51 right? So now if I watch simulation from that point forward, it's choosing to drop in because we already have a casting
  • 18:08 and that hole in the middle is part of the casting there, right? So now we've got that. Now we just need to do a finish run on that.
  • 18:20 So I'm just gonna go to milling pocketing and I need a corner in mill, a sharp corner in mill
  • 18:26 to finish that floor so that I get sharp corners. So I'll just say floor finish, yes, rough pass, no
  • 18:35 and I will use just a regular in mill no on previous dock. We don't need to worry about that.
  • 18:43 And we just want concentric N spiral should be good to go. Oh, I need speeds and feeds step over is gonna be 40%
  • 19:08 and I can rename this as well because I built that as a finish. So if I just change just this one finish floor
  • 19:21 on pocket, I would expect that all of 'em get that change. So let's watch that as well. Cool thing is simulation's gonna show you
  • 19:33 if you're making any mistakes. So one mistake I might have made here is I might not have left enough material on the floor and I didn't.
  • 19:43 So all it's doing is just that edge. So I wanna actually leave enough material on the pocketing floor that my finished floor needs to perform.
  • 19:53 An action needs to actually cut. So if I go to strategy and rough, I can go to stock allowance on the floors, right?
  • 20:03 And I'm gonna leave 10 Dow and then I can also leave some on the walls as well. And the finish will automatically rebuild to show you
  • 20:15 that it's gonna actually finish the core and the simulation of the cut based on the color of the tool.
  • 20:20 So right now this tool is gold. So if I change this tool to this tool to a FIA and this bull nose in mill is gold,
  • 20:31 you'll be able to see the difference in the cut color in the simulation. So now I'll run that.
  • 21:29 Perfect. So let's continue on. We've got some holes to drill on this side and we should be good to go.
  • 21:39 One thing I'm noticing on the stock is it looks like this stock right here is sized wrong. I'm not sure why. I'm gonna actually going
  • 21:50 to open up designer real quick and show you guys how I can make that correction. I don't want to ignore it.
  • 21:56 So I'm just gonna show you, let's open up while that's opening up, I'll continue doing the drilling on this side.
  • 22:07 All right, so let's find some hole. That one's from the, it's coming from the other side. These are the holes that I can drill from the front.
  • 22:16 So I'm going to go to milling and drilling with that P top selected. And I'm gonna reset this default all
  • 22:25 and say valve seat drilling. And I will use, oh there's manufacturing suite opening up for me. So I'm gonna actually open up this part
  • 22:41 and it looks like one of these walls is too short one way. So I'm gonna actually grab the wall
  • 22:51 and extrude it the other direction. So extrude direction, if I plus space bar, it will reverse it. Let's go 0.2,
  • 23:08 we're gonna go distance 0.2, I'm extruding that and if I hit check, hit it the wrong way. So extrude, I'm gonna select the face
  • 23:28 extrude direction and I press face bar to reverse it. Let's see, keeps going the other way. Oh it a negative, negative 0.2.
  • 23:49 There you go. So once I hit checkbox here, it'll apply it and I'll hit okay, I'll exit that command.
  • 23:57 So I'm successful and I want, it's separate, but let's finish that up real quick and,
  • 24:34 and we are going to
  • 24:47 unite those two bodies. There we go. So now I've united them, I can save this file and I'm also gonna save as a step.
  • 24:59 And then the cool thing is since I brought in a step and a spree right here, let's finish this drilling off real quick, right?
  • 25:24 So because I brought in a step and because they're connected, I can go to CAD features up here and this stock casting cylinder head, I can actually
  • 25:40 restore the CAD link or update it. So if it was a different name like version two, I could restore it then update it.
  • 25:46 But I should be able to just click update and it should resize. I didn't save it all the way out.
  • 25:56 I have to click the check box here and designer. Now if I update it now it's sized correctly. All right, so that was a little thing
  • 26:11 where it was sized wrong. I need to make an adjustment. I don't need to start from scratch programming, I can just go back into whatever CAD platform,
  • 26:19 make the adjustment, um, and then just update in Espree and it's one of the coolest features as well. So I'm just gonna continue on programming here.
  • 26:29 So we've got our drilling op, this uh, update made it go to a new layer. So let me put it back on the stock layer. There you go.
  • 26:41 Perfect. So let's watch the drilling ops. Well solid change. So I just need to re-add it back as the stock, there it goes.
  • 26:59 And it told you that there was something wrong over there. So now we can continue on. And you would've seen it as soon as you went
  • 27:06 to simulation there was no stock. So we're gonna finish the floors and then we'll go to the drilling
  • 27:25 change to the drill. Now we should be good to go and do the valve seats so I can see all the little details in there.
  • 27:39 Perfect. All right, next we can do these angled holes and then flip the part over and finish on the other side.
  • 27:51 Okay, so let's find those. We've got that side and there we go. These are coming from the this side
  • 28:03 actually if you look at the work plane, it shows this hole being drilled from the back. But if I come up here I can actually flip that.
  • 28:11 So let's apply the drilling op, see what happens. And then let's see how to fix it. So I'm gonna go to milling
  • 28:17 and I'm gonna go to drilling default. All general is going to be drill angle bolts for the name. And then I'm going to choose my half inch drill
  • 28:32 and it shows you a preview and we can see that that preview is not going to work for us, but we'll fix that here in a second,
  • 28:46 right? So we're gonna get an error, you know, beyond machines access limits. If I select this feature and I go up to features, there's a flip command, right?
  • 28:58 So now if I rebuild this, let's see if it fixes it, there it goes because I flipped it by just using
  • 29:05 that command, I can flip the direction of my whole feature. It's really, really handy. One thing I'm gonna notice is
  • 29:11 that because I'm on an angle, the clearance is not that great. So I'm gonna actually go into this operation
  • 29:17 and go to the links tab, which controls my clearing and adjust my clearance to be larger so that I'm further from the part when I'm moving from
  • 29:26 down from each hole. So let's watch that operation and go from there. Well that operates, I'm gonna close designer real quick.
  • 29:40 Here we go. Perfect. All right, so this is kind of all we need to, we need to do the radius up here as well.
  • 29:55 But this is a really good part. We're gonna flip it here in a second. Let's do some freeform surfacing
  • 30:00 and then we'll go from there. So I'm gonna go back to my features tab. I need to create some features.
  • 30:06 So I'm actually just gonna go to feature tab ribbon freeform and select the face that I want to do
  • 30:15 and then I can check everything else if I want. You don't have to, it just depends on the operation.
  • 30:20 We're gonna do it between curves. Then I need to also build a chain for the bottom loop. So I'm gonna click auto chain there.
  • 30:31 And then for the top loop, two things about chains and between curves, the start points of the chains need
  • 30:40 to be the same and the direction of the chains need to be the same. So we want to reverse that chain
  • 30:46 because it's, it was going the wrong way. We want climb cutting which would be spinning counterclockwise. So this chain and this chain need to be reversed, right?
  • 30:58 And so you can see those errors. Arrows change. And then I also want to change um, the direction or the start point, right?
  • 31:11 So if I look features right, and I'll say if I go to my properties window, I'll go to start point and I can click that little spot, right?
  • 31:23 So now the start point is right there and I want the start point for this one up here in the same spot.
  • 31:28 So I'll go to start point there. So now they both have the same start point relative and the same direction.
  • 31:38 So they're good enough for me to use on a between curves operation. So with this freeform I'm gonna go up to operations.
  • 31:47 I don't have to turn on the view, but I need to be active in it to add my new operation to
  • 31:52 that we're gonna go to freeform and we're gonna go to between curves finishing, we need to select our freeform.
  • 32:03 I'm gonna system default all go to the general tab and name it Finish radius on Fort. Let's use a tool.
  • 32:16 We can use ball mill, we can use an end mill, we can use a bull nose. I might use a bull nose for this one.
  • 32:25 Pretty, it's almost a ball mill, barely a flat on the bottom. So I'm gonna try and get a fast spindle speed
  • 32:32 and a slow speed rate. And then toolpath profiles, I don't want, I'm not leaving stock but I need two.
  • 32:42 There's a couple options you can do between curves, profiles ruled feature, open surfaces or looping. This is technically looping,
  • 32:49 but I prefer to use the tool profiles 'cause you get a little bit more control on which direction, where you're working up, down,
  • 32:56 whether you're working from the bottom up or down from the top down. So here I'm gonna select these two chains I created, um,
  • 33:04 optimize for scallop pipe and I'm gonna set my scallop pipe to one thou or five tenths. Let's go with that and we should be good to go.
  • 33:12 So I'll hit okay, let it build the operation.
  • 33:36 Might have been a little too aggressive on my scalp height, especially considering the tolerance of my operation was set
  • 33:41 to five tenths as well. While we're waiting, let's, there we go.
  • 33:59 Cool thing is if I look at the previous op, I can see what material it's trying to remove 'cause every operation is updating the stock based on my,
  • 34:10 I'm selecting it to update the stock in the operation. So you can see what materials left here for this op to finish.
  • 34:17 So now we'll click it and we've got, let's watch the operation first and then we'll go from there. Perfect. All right,
  • 34:36 so nice little finish on the radius. I'm gonna show you guys something pretty cool. I would not usually build six different
  • 34:44 between curves here, right? Once you get one you like and it's perfected, I'm gonna actually copy it down. Now the the downside is you can't make adjustments once
  • 34:54 you've done this because those five are copies, they're locked. But you don't need to create a new freeform, you don't need to create all that.
  • 35:00 You're creating copies of the operation you already have to different positions. So what I like to do is I'm gonna come up here to features,
  • 35:09 features manager, select the operation and I'm gonna go to right click in the GUI and go to copy. And I'm gonna set it to translate
  • 35:18 and I'm gonna use copy, add copies to group and use two points. So if I select the center point of this circle
  • 35:26 to the center point of that circle, I'm gonna get a copied operation. Now cool thing is I'm gonna add both of those
  • 35:33 and then I'm gonna copy that from this point down to this point. So now I've copied those and I can take those first two again, just select those
  • 35:48 and copy, copy use two points. Hit okay, select that point, come down here and select that point. Nope, I'm not accidentally copied it twice.
  • 36:22 There it goes. I don't know why I did it twice. It's my fault. I must have mis clicked. So translate copy, use two points, okay?
  • 36:30 And I'm gonna say this one down to there. There it goes. I think I accidentally clicked this one up
  • 36:37 here as the destination and the location. So it just recopied them all to the same spot. Cool thing is now I can watch all of these.
  • 37:05 So because Espree builds the links outside the operations, it's building automatic links between those operations. You don't need to worry that just
  • 37:14 because you copied them that it doesn't know how to get from one start to the next. Espree is building the links outside the operations.
  • 37:20 That's why we have links over here and that's why they show us different build parameters. That's just a real handy way to create copies,
  • 37:29 especially if like five access operations on a part that has very, you know, very similar in space parts, right?
  • 37:37 So now I can, what I like to do from here is go to the operations tab, select your last op,
  • 37:44 all five us all six of these are not updating the stock. To do that I can just right click
  • 37:50 and set to enable stock update. And you'll see the cube down here starts to build. So now the stock is updating for all these operations.
  • 37:58 I'm gonna select the last one. I'm gonna right click and I'm gonna say save stock to file, right? And I'm gonna save this
  • 38:12 as side one stock, right? So now I can go home part set up, I can create a new work piece
  • 38:22 and this will be work piece two, same part. But this time I'm going to load in that work side one stock.
  • 38:33 Okay, so now we're gonna hit okay, we're gonna go to our machine setup and I need to hold on,
  • 38:39 I wanna hold my OP two onto another side. Let's load in something else from Nexus so that we can hold our part.
  • 38:45 We're not gonna use the same fixtures, right? So I'll just select this and I'm gonna come up here to Nexus
  • 38:52 and this time let it reload the platform. This time I'll download something else. Let's look for Curt and it can be a DX six is fine.
  • 39:11 You can do a, let's see, you need a pretty big one for this part. Let's see, let's do the six 90 right here.
  • 39:26 I'm gonna download that, make sure. Then I'm gonna come up here and click fixture. And there I have that Curt and it mounted on FA two.
  • 39:40 Let's say I wanna mount it on FA three on the opposite side I wanna rotate 90 degrees, right? So our fix is on the left
  • 39:50 and then I'm gonna copy this one as well and paste it to the same spot. FA three and then shift this one down negative 10.
  • 40:03 And we could go a little bit further on this one 'cause it's a bigger vice. There you go. All right,
  • 40:08 so then I'm gonna mount my work piece two. So when I click work piece, it's gonna mount the WA
  • 40:14 and then you have the option of work piece one or two, let's go to two. And then now I need to rotate it
  • 40:21 and so that I'm holding on the other side. So I'm gonna select this face and then I'm gonna select this space
  • 40:28 and I'm gonna put an offset end of, let's say I have 0.625 parallels in it, right? So I'm putting an offset and then I'm gonna click make.
  • 40:38 So it flips it and it spaces it 0.625 off that bottom floor. We could even go higher if you wanted.
  • 40:46 Now I need to mount this face against the fixed draw. So I'll select the fixed draw and click make.
  • 40:55 And now our part's there and now we can shift it down and X. So I'll say negative five, let's go negative six.
  • 41:04 There it goes. That looks pretty good. We'll hit okay and when this closes it should close and clamp onto the part.
  • 41:13 So now we're ready to start machining on the other side, right? Cool thing is I don't really need to change much on my part side.
  • 41:20 I'm just gonna keep programming and Espree will figure out. Um, you know, so let's see. I need to go to part two
  • 41:29 and features, I need to come over here and be active in part two. That's basically it. But you just continue to program
  • 41:37 on the same part in the workspace, just active in part two. So I'm gonna select this floor right here
  • 41:45 and I'm gonna click feature pocketing and it's gonna build me a pocket set like that so I can run a roughing operation on that just
  • 41:53 to rough it out and then come through and finish it with something else, right? So let's go to milling
  • 41:59 and let's go to pocketing general system default, I'm gonna say rough backside pocketing tool. Let's use the small face mill.
  • 42:16 I like when you have open pockets like this Esprees hybrid profit milling is excellent at peeling material away really quickly.
  • 42:23 Let's use previous stock. Yes, strategy was gonna be profit milling hybrid strategy. Yes, this is a huge benefit when you have open edge pockets,
  • 42:33 which is what the dash lines is showing us right now. So let's put some speeds and feeds on it.
  • 42:43 And then incremental depth. I will do 0.2 50. Let's do this at 0.1 50. I don't think there's any slotting,
  • 42:50 but if there is minimum tri cordal, let's go to 20 rough, let's put some speeds and feeds in there.
  • 43:08 Step over, I'm gonna do 43% and I will leave. You can leave on the floors or walls. Um, let's leave 10 dow on the walls
  • 43:23 and I'm not gonna leave anything on the floors. Don't need to worry about entries and exits 'cause it's open pocket, it's gonna prefer those.
  • 43:31 We can adjust those. So that's what we get. Let's take a look. So it's cool, it's mixing a profit, milling,
  • 43:52 peeling strategy in. So the first one was actually profit facing but it's mixed in with the profit milling section of pocketing and it's peeling away
  • 44:04 and then it starts to do the actual profit milling tri cordial tool path in between these, right? So it was starting to do it mixed this tool in
  • 44:19 with the side faces as well, right? So then we can see the preview of our stock as well. One thing is I put all these on the operations layer.
  • 44:30 Let's put those on the features layer. All right, so we already have some drilling features we can do over here real quick and then we can finish these walls.
  • 44:39 Let's finish the walls here. We're gonna go to milling pocketing and I'll say general, let's do default. I'm gonna say finish pocket walls.
  • 44:55 Rough no wall. Yes. What kind of tool? We'll use the one inch in mill showing you a preview of the orientation of that tool.
  • 45:07 And this time concentric n will be fine. Let's go Nothing, nothing crazy here. We do want some speeds and feeds.
  • 45:16 So on the wall finished tab, we'll do some speeds and feeds on here. Let's do that. And we are good.
  • 45:31 If you want different lead-ins, you can adjust those, right? So just something simple to finish those walls. If you wanted to do a floor finish, you could
  • 45:45 as well, right? One thing you could just change the stock allowance on the rough and then activate floor finish right here, right?
  • 45:56 So let's find all these holes over here in part two. So we're gonna go over to features and we're gonna go to holes.
  • 46:06 And let's say yes we actually, we really only need holes but this, yeah, we should be good. There it goes. All right,
  • 46:17 so now I've got all these holes over here as well. One thing is I want to machine this as a pocket, right?
  • 46:27 And I can do spiraling in here. So let's do drilling here and then spiraling. So milling, we'll go to drilling
  • 46:39 general, I'll say drill counter board bolts. It's a two 50. Okay? Okay. And then I also wanna spiral those
  • 47:03 with a smaller INM mill. Let's see, what size of mill do I have? Oh, the one inch is way too big.
  • 47:12 Let's go with this one actually, let's try that. Yeah, so that one has a large radius. The one inch looks a little too big. It should be good.
  • 47:25 We can always decrease that if we need to. Incremental. There we go. So let's watch those operations we just added.
  • 47:44 So we're gonna drill, we had already drilled on the front side too, so we might not need to go all the way through,
  • 47:53 but we are very close to a collision, which is, it's showing you that we're not colliding. It's pretty close. I don't think we
  • 48:00 need to go that deep on those. So I'm just gonna open up the drill counter boards and adjust that.
  • 48:05 If you ever wanna adjust it by default it's going to go the distant, the depth that needs to from the feature.
  • 48:11 But we can say depth from feature, no, and then I can choose, I'm just going one inch then let's watch that spiraling.
  • 48:33 There we go. Perfect. All right, let's rough out these pockets. I'm not sure if we'll have enough time to finish all of it.
  • 48:43 Um, let me finish just these tapered pockets and then we'll play around with moving a fixture or something. So we'll select this and I can go to feature pocket
  • 48:54 and see if it builds me a pocket. We can select the bottom as well and click pocket and see what it builds.
  • 49:02 That one's some nice clean pocket. So sometimes when you're building features in Espree, you there are multiple ways to build them.
  • 49:09 Um, and if you get something you don't like the look of, you can try building it another way. Sometimes um, pockets are pretty, pretty robust.
  • 49:19 So with all three of those pockets selected, I'm gonna build a milling op and I'm gonna rough them. So I'm gonna go to pocketing
  • 49:29 and I'll go to strategy or general, sorry. And I'm gonna say rough taper pockets rough pass, yes. Ball finish. No end mill.
  • 49:46 That might be too big. Let's see,
  • 49:59 we'll at this and then strategy we'll do concentric and is fine and spiral. Yes. Rough. We'll put speeds and feeds in
  • 50:15 step over stock allowance on the walls. Believe five bow nothing on the floor and he equal entry with a minimum of 40 a max
  • 50:32 of 100 and a he equal angle of five we'll hit. Okay, so there we go. It built us the taper
  • 50:42 and left some material on the side, which is great, right? So now we'll select this feature and we're gonna go to milling.
  • 50:49 And this time I'm just gonna apply a contour or I can do a rough or a pocketing with wall finish.
  • 50:54 So let's go to pocketing with wall finish. And I'm gonna finish the walls with a tapered in mill. So finish with tapered in no
  • 51:06 and I'll say no Wall finish. Yes. And I will choose the taper in mill strategy. Should be good. Spiral. Yes. Let's go to wall finish.
  • 51:23 There we go. And you can decide whether you want each D level different DZ levels or the last C level.
  • 51:32 Let's go that. Then let's watch those operations and see what we've got.
  • 52:04 One thing is that this, um, we could go deeper on our opposite side drilling just so that we have a drill hold drilled all the
  • 52:14 way through there if you wanted. So now we're coming in with the finished taper. It's getting spindle speed up
  • 52:36 it looks like. There we go. All those operations you can see rough. All right, cool thing. One of my favorite parts about espree
  • 53:13 and fixturing, um, is the fact that you can mix all this up. Like a lot of other programs when you build fixtures you
  • 53:22 have to kind of build your part around it and espree, they're all modular. So I can come in here and add additional parts
  • 53:30 and let it solve for me. So if I just come up here to home machine setup, um, let's say I want to copy this work piece set
  • 53:39 up to another side. I can just select this work piece or this fixture, copy it and then paste it to side FA two.
  • 53:49 And now I have two, right? And then I can do the same thing. I can copy just the lower um, fixture as well
  • 53:57 to FA two, right? I could change fixtures out. So let's say um, I like these smaller fixtures better than these CURTs.
  • 54:08 I can open this Curt up, come over here, click this and open up the jerk jergens instead. Right? I'm gonna have to correct the movement a little bit,
  • 54:19 but it's fairly simple. So I can just say, okay, um, that face to that face, let's mate, there it is.
  • 54:45 And then we can see about, might be the other one. We can shift it in negative two. I wanna shift that bottom face to that.
  • 55:08 Oh yeah, so I replaced that. We don't wanna shift the, that was my fault. We don't wanna shift the, I was adding shifts in here.
  • 55:19 Once you add it, we need to go to the work piece and then that's where you're gonna make the changes.
  • 55:24 So now I can make this work piece that's my fault to that face and click mate and then this face to
  • 55:34 that face and click mate. So now my part is mated, right? And I don't need a a y shift like that.
  • 55:46 And then when they close, they'll close right there. Same thing. I can change this one. I can say, all right, let's just edit it
  • 55:55 and put in the jergens like that so you can just modify your setup and get different ones. So let's say I go get a
  • 56:07 another CURT vice and I can change out these two curt vices and have different curt vices. So let's say I get the DX right here
  • 56:22 and I want this vice changed. I'll say edit. And I got the DX six downloaded, right? So let's say I actually do need to mate
  • 56:38 this because they're different vices. So let's say negative three. That, there you go. So now I have two different vices,
  • 56:53 but they're both still functioning on the part. I can make this one made as well. All right, so no one else I know of is making fixturing as modular
  • 57:19 as a spree is making it, especially with using Nexus. Now you can just download and use your parts from there.
  • 57:27 So I hope the webinar was helpful.

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