Mixed Part and Plate, Corner Loops, Drilling and Tapping.
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In this tutorial we will be using thick plate, and corner loops will be used to ensure a clean sharp corner. The reason for using corner loops is that when cutting thick plate there can be some lag between the top and the bottom of the cut. If the torch changes direction abruptly (as with a right angled corner), the lag can cause the bottom of the cut to have a slightly curved profile. The corner loop causes the torch to move past the corner and loop back onto the path eliminating this problem.
Plasma and water are two cutting mediums where lag may be an issue. Gas is less of a concern (primarily because a slower cutting speed is used), and in any case using a corner loop in this situation can cause the flame to extinguish when the path crosses itself.
The other type of processing we will perform here is drilling and tapping. Whether you can perform these tasks on your machine will depend on the tools you have available. If you have a simple drilling head, then drilling will be possible but not tapping. Larger systems will be able to perform both of these tasks.
If you have a larger drilling system that is able to select its own tools, then you also need to be concerned with the naming of tools both within PrimeCut and on the machine you are programming. This is because the tool name specified in the NC code instructs the machine to load the appropriate tool. If the names do not match then the machine will either raise an error, or if you have managed to use an incorrect (but still valid) tool name then a different tool will be used for the job.
Two parts will be processed in this tutorial, and both will be nested on one plate. One of these parts requires a high degree of consistency, and so we are going to apply processing to the part before it is nested on the plate. We are less concerned about the other part, so we will nest it on the plate first and then apply processing to the plate.
In such a situation we are able to arrange the nest using both the processed and unprocessed parts. Once the nest has been created we can apply processing to the whole plate, but only unprocessed parts will be affected. This means geometry can be processed without making any selection, and PrimeCut will only apply it to those parts that are not currently processed.
In this section:
Part Processing with Corner Loops, Drilling and Tapping