Angled Head implementation and use with Postbuilder?

[#1]

Hello All,

I am after a little advise, we are getting a large 3axis machine which will be equipped with some right angled heads, I have a post that is 95% of the way there for everything accept the angled heads and having never dealt with angled heads I wanted to get some advise form you good people on the best way to implement them and the best way of using them with in NX and postbuilder?

Any advise or guidance is greatly appreciated. 

[#2]

The post should not need anything to use a right angle head.  In NX add a HEAD and define the tool axis of the head when in use.  Then create the tool and make the head the parent, or drag and drop a tool onto the head from the tool view.  The use of the right angle head is well documented in the help.  You should not need anything else to get the post to output the correct code.  Setting the distance from the gage point will change the output.  We will often use a unique work offset for operations using the right angle heads.

[#3]

Just to add to John's answer...

In the machine tool view add a "head" object (NOT a "Head" UDE)

The XYZ offsets are from the spindle's gage point to the RA Head's gage point.

The IJK should point UP the new tool axis (like the original post tool axis points UP the spindle)

Ken

[#4]

My feeling is that there will be more to it than using the HEAD object. I have seen several other postwriter's attempts at RA using this and I think they were manually transforming the frame for circles and drilling and cutter comp. A H/H kinematic works but NX doesn't send circles in non-primary planes (at least it didn't used to - haven't tried lately.) If XYZ motion is all you are after - the HEAD object would work out of the box I think.

[#5 · Accepted solution]

The initial question was in regard to a 3-AXIS post.  X,Y,Z is all you need. 

I have not had a problem using cutter comp, although I have had to use the "cutter compensation" ude rather than the default option in the operation.  It allows you to select the plane so you get G18 or G19 correctly.  The use of a cycle along the X ot Y axis is dependent on the machine control.

Ken Thanks for clarifying the diference between the head object and the "UDE".  Two TOTALLY different things.   

[#6]

Many thanks for the information John and Ken, as always I appreciate people taking the time to answer these questions.

I had define a Head in the tool view and had put the IJK offsets in but wasn't getting what i was expecting out the other end and getting strange results with Vericut? I have taken the IJK offsets out and all seems ok apart from the intial move where it feeds down into the part (this may be something to do with my .ctl file with Vericut)

But I am now happy that I am on the right track so thank you.

[#7]

One More question on angled heads....

Tool offsetting can anyone give any information on how they are setting this with angled heads?
I have defined a tool just a tool and have set the orientation in NX if I define the offsets for the Angled heads how can I get this value out as an tool offset to send to the post/machine?
Any help greatly received!

[#8]

We set the tool length from the end of the tool (tangent point in the Z) the X or Y offset ( distance from the tip of the tool to the center line of the spindle) depending on the direction the head is facing. We adjust using a separate work offset.
Fortunately we have a tool presetter that works well for this.