Tapered mills in the tool library

[graham.j.bland]

I am trying to add some tapered mills to my tool library and while I won't say there are errors but they are very confusing. I would have posted to the feedback forum but being having F360 for 'personal use' I am not allowed to post there.

Add a tapered mill. Working down the cutter list I should first select the Tapered type.

If I select Bull nose then everything seems to work fine. I can even define a ball nose by setting the corner radius to 1/2 of the Diameter, I can even select values of the corner radius over 1/2 of the diameter, that still leaves the diagram as a ball nose but shows no errors.

However if I select Ball for the tapered type I still have the option of selecting the corner radius. This changes the behaviour of the Diameter parameter, in fact it seems to be ignored. The hint on the diagram shows the bottom diameter, this is now only affected by the corner radius. Diameter seems to have no effect but is a required parameter. Corner radius is also a required parameter and seems to ovrride the diameter.

This is all a bit confusing.

So should I define a tapered ball nose as a bull nose with a corner radius of 1/2 the diameter or make it a ball nose and make sure that the corner radius is 1/2 the diameter?

Graham Bland

[seth.madore]

Can you share a product link to a tool you're trying to define?

[graham.j.bland]

These are the main ones

https://www.sainsmart.com/collections/genmitsu-cnc-router-bits-end-mills/products/genmitsu-cnc-route...

And

https://www.sainsmart.com/collections/genmitsu-cnc-router-bits-end-mills/products/genmitsu-2-flute-t...

[seth.madore]

You want to set your tool up as follows:

 

[graham.j.bland]

Thank you, but I really would prefer to define it as a tapered ball end rather than bull to make rool selection easier, changing the tapered type does not affect anything else.

I have been doing a bit more 'playing' and think I have found the problem, the entry of the data for a tapered mill needs some constraints added and limiting entry of the parameters

Tapered Mill with tapered type of Bull Nose selected

Add constraint Corner radius cannot be > than Diameter/2

Tapered Mill with tapered type of Ball Nose selected

Remove the corner radius parameter entry and fix it at diameter/2

If the constraints are applied by the user then all the problems disappear.

I cannot report this to Autodesk as an error, I use the free personal version so I have no access I can find to report problems. Could you do so on my behalf?

Thanks for your help, time and effort.

Graham Bland

[seth.madore]

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@graham.j.bland wrote:

Thank you, but I really would prefer to define it as a tapered ball end rather than bull to make tool selection easier, changing the tapered type does not affect anything else.

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Isn't it the same result though?

 

[graham.j.bland]

Yes it is,

But so is this

notice the diameter, how this will change anything I don't know, certainly some calculated cutting data values, will it affect a toolpath? I don't know.