In manufacturing how do you flip the heights when flipping the part to mill the bottom?

[jamesdarrah1]

I have a fairly simple design to mill & drill some openings on the top of a tube, rotate it 180 degrees and mill & drill some more openings on the bottom.  The top is done and looks like it will work.   I need to do the  same operations on the bottom, 2D pocket, 2D contour,  and drilling  but selecting openings on the bottom. My plan, which hasn't worked so far was to duplicate the top settings, rename to bottom settings and deselect the items that were selected due to the copy and then select the openings on the bottom.  My problem right now is to get the height correct when the part is oriented bottom side up.

This shows the part flipped with the heights pointing down. For the bottom setup how do I reorient these heights to flip along with the part so they align like they do when the tube is rotated top up?

[etfrench · Accepted solution]

You need to create a new setup and set Z to the bottom face.  You can copy the toolpaths from the top setup, but you'll need to reset the contour selections.

[HughesTooling]

Also unless you have a 4 axis machine and postprocessor you should not be using tool orientation within a machining operation. For 3 axis machines you set the orientation in the setup only.

Uncheck for 3 axis machines.

Matk