‘Basketball hoop’ milled with five-axis technology

Open Mind Technologies AG (www.openmind-tech.com) has announced that its HyperMill CAM software has been used to undertake the five-axis programming of a replica basketball hoop, which was machined on a Grob G350 five-axis machining centre using conical ‘ball barrel’ cutters from OSG.

Starting with a block of aluminium weighing more than 80kg and using a 320mm-long cutting tool, the finished basketball hoop was milled to a final weight of 565gm — a 99.3% material reduction that achieved extremely
fine levels of detail.

The application was designed to highlight HyperMill’s high-performance capability for complex five-axis machining, including milling deep pockets and finishing curved shapes, while advanced collision control enabled the long cutting tool to machine in extremely tight contours.

The outer regions were machined with HyperMill MAXX Machining roughing applied with a five-axis shape-offset roughing process.