Surface to Toolpath

[bobpeterson]

Does anyone know how to convert a complex surface from Rhino to a toolpath with certain offsets, such as basically creating a fill pattern with a cutting path/sliced layers.

Bob

[Johannes @ Robots in Architecture]

Hello Bob,

Hmm... Let's make sure that I got that correctly: By "complex surface" you mean polysurface, i.e. multiple joined and possibly trimmed surfaces?
We've done quite a few milling projects with "native" Grasshopper, and while it is totally possible to create your own surfacing and roughening (usually more difficult) code, it's quite tedious and slow, as regular milling software also takes a few seconds to minutes to calculate toolpaths.
From my experience - if you don't mind the slight loss in resolution it's easier to deal with one mesh, rather than many (trimmed) surfaces. At the end you end up with polylines anyway, so using meshes instead of NURBS isn't that bad.

So if you e.g. want to mill hundreds of similar objects it makes sense to code it yourself in GH, otherwise (e.g. for single objects that you want to mill) I would recommend to use CAM software to generate the toolpaths and then turn it into robot code through PRC. Natively we support SprutCAM (which is also free for universities and students) but it should work with most CAM code.

It's a feature of the member version, but I can issue you a temporary license!

All the best,
Johannes @ Robots in Architecture

[bobpeterson]

When I say complex surface I mean, something that a robot should be able to handle.
Like a wave shape-see attached. I want it to process a 3D part by additive or subtractive means.  I don't necessarily need it to process multiple surfaces.  One would be ok to start with.  How do you process into meshes in Rhino/GH?

Maybe the best way to tackle this is to start simple.  Lets say my finished part was a cylinder. Has prc come up with a way to slice from a square stock part to round finished Cylinder.  Or from an additive perspective would prc slice into round disks to build into a cylinder?

It would be great to have that temp license to just try it out. Does PRC handle this SprutCAM- Please send.

Thanks
Bob

[bobpeterson]

Here's a example block to cylinder pix

[Johannes @ Robots in Architecture]

Hello Bob,

It's important to mention that KUKA|prc is a "universal" tool and not a specialized milling solution. If your plan is to do mostly milling it definitely makes sense to e.g. get RobotMaster and MasterCAM (though they are quite expensive in the five-digits).
That being said it's totally possible to do additive fabrication, milling, wirecutting, etc. and quite many users utilize it exactly for that, look e.g. at the videos of Artis Engineering (not all are done with PRC, though) https://vimeo.com/user12374666

I've attached an example how the cylinder could for example work, the other surface wouldn't be any different. As mentioned in the other eMail, please send me an eMail for the temporary license (johannes@robotsinarchitecture.org).

Best,
Johannes