CNC Prototyping, the Way It Is Today As it was mentioned earlier, the most widespread CNC manufacturing techniques for prototyping involve
cutting. Well, there are a lot of cutting techniques as well. 80% of the
CNC produced parts in the world is manufactured by using CNC turning
and milling. The percentage of those methods in prototyping is even
higher. Some parts are made on a single piece of equipment. However.
prototypes often have some particular elements, that can’t be
manufactured by milling or turning. For that, such technologies as
boring, slotting, planing, gear machining, grinding and polishing are
employed.
cnc machining metal parts CNC Turned Parts Conventional turning has always been a process for
making shafts, tapers, spheres, threads, and bushings, basically any
parts that have a symmetry axis. Now, with the introduction of CNC, the
capabilities of turning have further increased. A milling head can be
installed into the revolver head of the machine tool to virtually turn
it into a milling center with a turning head. That way, compressor
wheels, gears, crankshafts, and even turbine blades can be manufactured
in a single setup. CNC Milled Parts for Freeform Manufacturing Milling
has made a giant leap with the development of computer numerical control
as well. The point is that the operator working manually can only make
straight movements while milling. But the CNC breaks this limitation.
The mechanically controlled motors can make the tiniest and the most
precise movements that are unavailable to the best of operators. If we
combine the movements of the motors along all the axes and add some
tilting possibilities around those axes, we’ll get the ability to
manufacture any kind of freeform surface without any special tooling.
The only task is to make a suitable program. Products have been
increasingly getting more complex over the years. If things were made of
simple surfaces before, now we can see that virtually any product has
some kind of smooth freeform surface. Manufacturing it manually is
simply impossible and even writing a program with surface coordinates is
really hard and will take a lot of time. And time is really important
when we talk about CNC prototype machining. So, Computer Aided
Manufacturing systems have been developed. They use a CAD 3D-model of
the part to generate tool paths for the desired surface. However, the
program won’t help you with choosing the right cutting parameters or
choose the perfect material.
