I had a bit of experience with 5 axis machining and the programming of it is far from trivial.
3 axis is really easy to automate, the paths are quite straightforward, especially for 3D printing when you go layers by layers.
As soon as you add a 4th axis nothing is straightforward anymore. You have a high probability of collision between the extruder and the workpiece and now instead of having a single mathematical solution on how to go from point A to point B you have multiples options and no “right” option, it all depends on how the machine is built and the shape of the part.
Yup. This is one area where machining and machine movement is still an art. It can be scienced but it’s expensive to model a machine that well and CAM software still needs a lot of handholding beyond 3ax moves. That will eventually change, I expect someone will slap some ‘AI’ into CAM. I wonder, however, if it won’t actually require something close to general AI for real world utility.
I think this would be the biggest issue.
I had a bit of experience with 5 axis machining and the programming of it is far from trivial.
3 axis is really easy to automate, the paths are quite straightforward, especially for 3D printing when you go layers by layers.
As soon as you add a 4th axis nothing is straightforward anymore. You have a high probability of collision between the extruder and the workpiece and now instead of having a single mathematical solution on how to go from point A to point B you have multiples options and no “right” option, it all depends on how the machine is built and the shape of the part.
Yup. This is one area where machining and machine movement is still an art. It can be scienced but it’s expensive to model a machine that well and CAM software still needs a lot of handholding beyond 3ax moves. That will eventually change, I expect someone will slap some ‘AI’ into CAM. I wonder, however, if it won’t actually require something close to general AI for real world utility.
And if they put a license on it: https://github.com/jyjblrd/Radial_Non_Planar_Slicer/issues/1
Or, if someone comes up with an alternative.