plunge milling along a curve

[jeff.brower]

Wondering if we can plunge mill along a curve, or make a groove the same width as the cutter but use a plunge milling strategy

[abhishek.juvekar]

HI Jeff,

As far as I know, we can do it using a point list pattern of a hole feature and use a curve in pattern's dimension tab. Please refer the attached image.

Thank You.

[TomOliver]

If it's a straight line, then hole, and linear pattern might be your best bet. The problem with using the curve is that points are only created at the end of a segment not along the curve. 

[jeff.brower]

Thanks for your input, I agree and should have included more information. This case requires an elliptical slot that is quite long, and using a hole feature with many holes really slows the software down.

Thanks again for your ideas.

[jeff.brower]

Thanks that looks like it will work if I can break the curve where we want to plunge, like every .030 or so. While it is not the complete solution it is another piece of the puzzle. Many holes really slow down the job.

Thanks again

[abhishek.juvekar]

Hi Jeff,

Does it slow down the software during centerline sim? If it is, can you please check keeping 'Use graphic hardware' unchecked, improves the speed.

Thank you.

[jeff.brower]

We had a part with many holes and the software was slow to respond when making changes to any feature in the file. I don't recall the part just that a customer supplied file had all the holes and it was an irregular pattern so we used feature recognition to find all the holes.

[bhorstTGM48 · Accepted solution]

Have you tried this?

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/featurecam/learn-explore/caas/simplecontent/content/creating-...

[jeff.brower]

I've not tried that, it looks quite helpful in this situation, I'll give it a try...

Thanks!

[bhorstTGM48]

It works pretty well, I have used it for plunge milling around an irregular shape / contour. 

[jeff.brower]

That works well, thanks!

It produced over 6000 holes in this case because it's a long curve with small stepover, but it worked.