Hi, I am new to the CAM side of things and I am awaiting delivery of a new 1100MX.
If I have a design in Fusion which is in metric units of measurement, but it also has for example holes that are an imperial diameter, can I develop the tool paths in Fusion using a mix of metric and imperial tooling (in this example imperial size drills) and put it through the post-processor into Pathpilot such that it would switch between the metric and imperial tools as required or do I within Pathpilot have to work in either metric or imperial modes and not a mix? Hope that makes sense.
It’s less confusing to stay in one measuring system if you can. You can easily enter tool information into the Fusion tool table in whatever units you want… it’ll convert “.25 in” entered into the text box to its metric equivalent or vice-versa. Path Pilot is just going to stay in whatever mode the post put it in and call up tools by number.
Preferably, you should stick to one system or the other, rather than trying to mix and match. Luckily, if the only thing that is mixed is drill sizes, then there is an easy fix if you have already done the work to make the drawing, and you don’t want to re-draw the part. Because tool paths for drills are off the center of the hole, changing drill sizes won’t change the tool path, it will only change the RPM and feedrate of the tool. You can convert the imperial holes to metric on the CAM software and simply use the imperial drills you want to use when cutting the part. The tool path won’t differ if the only imperial feature is the hole diameter, and the CAM will be able to calculate the correct RPM and feedrate if it has the converted metric diameter.