Full Text of Article March 2005

Soft Servo's Advanced 3D Contour Control for High-Speed Machining

Soft Servo has re-engineered and improved their highly advanced, highly specialized look-ahead function for high-speed machining: three-dimensional dynamic look-ahead contour control (3D-DLACC).

Look-ahead functions are becoming common in the CNC marketplace, because they provide better performance than conventional controls without look-ahead. Soft Servo’s 3D-DLACC is no exception: it solves problems with close points, corner rounding, gouging and overshooting. However, Soft Servo’s technologically superior and flexible 3D-DLACC is unique among the many different look-ahead functions offered by CNC vendors for 3D contours, milling or molding:

  1. 3D-DLACC has a more advanced and complex algorithm for acceleration/ deceleration before interpolation, maximizing speed and making the best use of the machine’s maximum acceleration/deceleration rate, resulting in higher performance.

  2. 3D-DLACC looks ahead a constant one second, resulting in greater efficiency and more consistent performance. Most other look-ahead functions look ahead a certain number of blocks: depending on the length of time necessary to complete these blocks, the control could be looking ahead too far (wasting computing power), or may not be looking ahead long enough to decelerate enough when needed.

  3. 3D-DLACC provides flexibility, allowing a choice among prioritizing accuracy, prioritizing speed, or finding a balance between accuracy and speed that optimizes cutting efficiency.

    To reach the highest possible accuracy while still maximizing feedrates whenever possible, 3D-DLACC works without any smoothing filter. (Smoothing filters, necessary in the absence of look-ahead, deteriorate the precision of multi-axis interpolation.)

    To increase speed by sacrificing some accuracy within an allowable tolerance, 3D-DLACC works with an adjustable smoothing filter. A long look-ahead smoothing filter results in smoother motion and faster feedrates, with a less accurate tool path; a shorter look-ahead smoothing filter results in a more accurate tool path, with slower feedrates.

Soft Servo's 3D-DLACC, soon to be the gold standard of high-speed precision machining, is available for our entire line of ServoWorks CNC products: MC-Quad, S-100M, S-120M and S-140M.


3D-DLACC: faster feedrates, higher precision.



TOP
© 2005, Soft Servo Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.