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Hey everyone,
I was cutting these parts out and noticed originally that my 2D adaptive wasn't cutting my dog bones in the corners of the interior pockets. I went to add a 2D contour and that seemed to do the trick, however, I wanted to try and use rest machining so that the 2D contour only does the corners. However, for some reason, it shows it as an empty toolpath and won't generate. I looked around and saw that it could be because my tool diameter was the same as the previous one so I tried sizing it down but that still gave errors.
I slightly oversized my dogbones so a .25 diameter cutter would do the job, so I'm not sure why the 2d adaptive isn't picking it up in the first place but if anyone can help me figure that out, or how to get the rest machining to work on my 2D contour I'd greatly appreciate it!
Solved! Go to Solution.
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A) The Adaptive is not cutting the dog-bones because of your Minimum Cutting Radius, which is set to .025".
B) Your 2D Contour and Rest Machining failure is because you specified a diameter of .25", which would be sufficient to machine the part complete with no material left over. Thus, it returned an empty toolpath.
To "trick" it into detecting material, set your value to .30" or so:

Seth Madore
Customer Advocacy Manager - Manufacturing
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Thanks @seth.madore. Is there anything I could do to make the 2D Adaptive toolpath work? I believe the .025" minimum cutting radius is just a default value that was set.
I'm not sure I'm following, so if I set my tool diameter to something slightly larger than my dog-bones, wouldn't that not cut it because it technically wouldn't fit in the area?
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I wouldn't advise reducing the Min Cutting Radius of Adaptive. Once it gets to such a low value, your machine is gonna start hammering as it makes extremely small movements.
Furthermore, 2D Adaptive is a roughing strategy, not meant for finishing dimensions of features. It's best advised to use a 2D Contour to bring features to final size.
When you play around with Rest Machining diameters, you're telling the toolpath to look for features that would have been left over from tool diameter "XX". So, if the tool you're referring to would have easily fit into any feature on the part, you're going to get "Empty Toolpath". So, specifying a diameter of .300" will create imaginary material in the dog-bones and provide something for that 2D Contour to actually cut.

Seth Madore
Customer Advocacy Manager - Manufacturing
Fusion