3d Machining a Fish Lure mold

[Anonymous]

Hi, I have been testing my simple 3d mill, stepper design. I am using Autocad Fusion 360 with Mach4 and a PMDX422 controller. I have everything working and am working my way through the CAM procedures. I created a simple 3d fishing lure body, rather organic in shape using loft. I sliced it top and bottom and used them as a subtraction tool in a block to generate the negative mold. To keep it simple I generated 3d adaptive roughing with a 1/4 ball mill and then a finishing sculpt. The simulation in ACF 360 looks great. In reality, the finishing cut is NOT going all the way to the bottom of the cavity and its not cleaning up the material. I have tried many many settings but no matter what, it will NOT touch the bottom and clean up the paths left by the roughing cut? any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I attached the file I am working with.

[LibertyMachine · Accepted solution]

I think the biggest problem is this:

You roughed it out with 3D Adaptive. This is completely valid and how it should often be done. However, the Adaptive operations are roughing operations. You left no "Stock to Leave". You really should be leaving .005-.010" axial and radial. The way that the toolpath is calculated makes it very unreliable to count on for finished surfaces.

How far down do you need to drop the tool to get it to clean up?

Another note; your stepover on your spiral tool is quite large and going to leave considerable cusps. You might want to tighten that up a bit, perhaps to .015-.02"

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Seth, Thanks so much for the information. I put in "stock to leave" and it work perfectly. Thanks again. K Maginsky.