devFoam - FAQ	Back to Browse Tapered Parts
Tapered Parts Cutting wizard: Foam block placement and setting

Tapered Parts Cutting wizard: Foam block placement and setting      Pro  version only         

This wizard includes 5 pages:

• Tapered Parts selection and placement - you can select and place here the Tapered Parts in the foam block
• Cutting Path creation - you will create here the cutting path for the 4 axis CNC foam cutting machine
• Optional: Create a Grid cut of multiple instances of selected parts - Here you can create a grid using for each cell the Part(s) you already selected
• Foam block placement and setting - the actual page
• Cutting file creation - the last panel, where you can create the cutting file

The following dialog will appear:

In this panel you will define the placement of the material block over the cutting table.

Two main views are available, to check the right placement of the material block:

• A Top View of foam block placement (see the above picture)
  Here you can see the cutting table in light gray, the X carriages run in Bold Red, the material block in light yellow, with the blocks inside in green
• A Side View of foam block placement (see the below picture)
  Here you can see the max X and Y travel of the carriages in light gray,  the material block in light yellow, with the blocks inside in green and cyan, the fast movement as green lines, the cut path are red lines. You can show the cut lines both at material faces and the real paths of the carriages. Please note that the real paths of the carriages can appear as very strange, but this is caused by extrapolation, dont worry about. The important think is that they are full included in the gray max X,Y travel rectangle

How to proceed:

As first check if the dimensions of your CNC machine are right, or set the right size by the Modify these settings button.

You can now use the 'Test Path limits' button to see if the default placement setting is good enough. If not make a step by step check:

Check if the Horizontal Bold Red lines in the Top View picture are all inside the max X travel. The Horizontal Bold red lines in the Top View picture show the real X run of the left and rigth carriages. The light gray rectangle shows the top view of the cutting table. See the picture above.

Check also if the Y run of both the carriages are inside the max Y travel of the carriages. See the Side View picture, enabling the real left and right carriage path. Moving left or right the material block can correct these values, depending on the tapered geometry of the Tapered Parts. As a rule of thumb, move the material block near the carriage where the Paths are wider, then press 'Update Preview' to update the picture. See the below picture:

Press now the 'Optmize X and Y placement' to compute the right offset.
The X offset is the distance of the nearest face of the material from the CNC origin, along the horizontal X axe.
The Y offset is the height of the bottom face of the material over the CNC origin (cutting table), along the vertical Y axe.

If the bock you are going to cut is rather small, probably all this adjustement is not required and the supplied initial parameters will be good enough to continue

Press now the 'Optmize X and Y placment' to compute the right offset.

If the block you are going to cut is rather small, probably all this adjustement is not required and the supplied initial parameters will be good enough to continue.

You can also check that using the 'Test Path limits' button

Press the 'Start 3D cutting simulation' button to run the  devSim Cnc Foam application that show a 3D simulation of the cutting Job.

More info about the picture in this dialog:

• You can Zoom In/Out using the mouse wheel
• Clicking a point inside the dialog you go in 'Distance' mode. When you move the mouse the distance and angle from the clicked point are displayed in the upper/left side. Clicking again a point the Distance mode will exit
• Clicking the right mouse button a contextual menu will be displayed, showing some more features.