How to: Using a plasma cutter, cut the cope and bevel of lateral (wye) pipe weldment

TysonDeNobrega

Greetings all!

As the title suggests Im trying to use our plasma cutter to make short work of the numerous copes we have to make for varying lateral pipe weldments. Using RobotStudio I've been able to create the path from a cad model but I'm at a loss of how to specifiy the angle of the torch as the TCP marches around the curve.

For example one of the weldments is a Ø14 XS with a Ø12" XS lateral joined at 60°

Im dealing with two types of models from Inventor; one file with the just the cope cut out and another type with the cope and beveled edge.

My thoughts so far...

For the model with just the cope i could use the surface normal as a reference axis but i dont know how to do this.

The model with cope and bevel I could have the one tool axis perpendicular to the surface normal of the bevel face, but again I don't know how this is done.

Im happy to supply models on request, any help would be appreciated!

TysonDeNobrega

Anybody....

TysonDeNobrega

Ok well I've managed to do this by pain painstakingly rotating each robot target to the correct orientation. Since this was such a time consuming process I've been moved to other projects until I can find a stream lined method for creating programs for different lateral weldments.<br>