NEW - HITCH FEED Push Bending

CNC Bender can now hitch feed during push bend to create a helical tube shape with many loops from a material that is much longer than the bender.

NEW - Push Bend Twist GEARING - Accurate Helical Coils

CNC Bender now uses electronic gearing in the rotational twist motion to the feed motion in order to create more accurate helical shapes. As the Feed axis moves forward, the Rotation axis rotates at a pre-programmed gear ratio in the Push Bending Profile page.

Since the twisting action is now electronically geared to the Feed axis, speed changes in the Feed axis will not change the pitch of the helix. Feed speed 1 or 10 makes no difference. Also, it precisely decelerates its rate of twist as the Feed axis enters its deceleration in order to prepare for a hitch feed motion. The effect is precise and repeatable coil production since the twist is completely and precisely dependent on the Feed axis in Push Bending.

The older Twist Velocity column is replaced with the Twist Gear column.

This results in a much more accurate synchronization between the Feed and Rotation axes during helical push bending.

The lowest effective gear ratio value is 0.002 degrees per Feed axis millimeter.

The ratio is used as "degrees of twist" in the following formula:

Rotation Degrees of Twist PER Feed Axis 1 Millimeter

So a twist gear of 1 would cause the rotate to twist 1 degree per the feed axis 1 millimeter of motion during Push Bending.

NEW - Calculate TOTAL BEND ANGLE for a Push Bend Coil

CNC Bender uses an AUTO ADJUST menu in option menus to automatically adjust and set values in the FRB (Feed Rotate Bend) page.

A new Push Bend tab is added in the Auto Adjust tab menu in the Bend options that allows you to automatically calculate the angle for a multiple circle helical coil.

Enter the circles in the helix, and press Calc Angle to find an approximate bend angle for a helical coil several levels high.

How to Use This Auto Adjust Feature

1 - Enter a value in the "Enter Circles in Helix" edit field. The value can be a floating point value.

2 - Press the Calculate Angle button.

3 - The resulting angle is the angle necessary to create a helix with the programmed number of circles.

4 - If necessary, further adjust the angle manually by pressing the edit box for the bend angle.

5 - Press the "This Bend Alone" to replace the current bend angle with the new calculated angle.

6 - Or press the "All Bends" if you intend to create multiple coils in one part.

NEW - Automatic Bend Combine During XYZ to FRB Conversion

CNC Bender now allows you to automatically combine adjacent bends into a single bend if the adjacent bends meet a preprogrammed criteria controlled by the Low Level dynamic options.

This feature is important because centerline XYZ data always represents bends that approach and exceed 180 degrees as two separate adjacent bends.

This part was drawn in SolidWorks and extracted by Benderlink for SolidWorks into XYZ data.
The data was imported into the XYZ data page of CNC Bender.
When XYZ to FRB conversion is made without the Combine Bends feature enabled, the result is five bends as shown in this FRB page. Bends 1 and 2 match, and bends 3 and 4 match. This is because each set of bends could be combined to represent a single bend.
Enter the Low Level menu. The Combine Bends feature is enabled in the dynamic options. The distance and twist thresholds are set so that the internal formula understands when two bends can be joined into one bend.
When XYZ to FRB conversion is made again, there are now only 3 bends in the FRB data. The first two bends are combined into high-angle bends that are proper for CNC benders.
This is the resulting image in CNC Bender Bender Data menu: