Hi there, i am fairly new to fusion 360 and i was wondering if anyone would have any suggestions on how to finish this area shown below:
i have tried a few different toolpaths such as parallel, scallop and contour but it always contacts the back wall.
If anyone has any suggestions i would really appreciated them, thank you.
Hey @adam.j.mclachlan,
Id probably go for a scallop but use touch surfaces to only machine the areas I want. You also need to turn tool containment to outside.
Hope this helps.
@Richard.stubley I have just tried your suggestion but then the material i have left from the roughing Toolpaths is still there. I went back and used a contour Toolpath again and i got this:
This allowed me to machine all the excess material away from that face whilst getting rid of the majority of the material, do you know how i could change this to get that same tool path but to machine the top too? Thank you.
Did running a scallop not work? is this what you are after?
Of course it sill needs the other features machining.
You wont really get around that with contour, as 3D contour is step up rather than step down. So imagine if you had a 1° inclined plane, even with a 0.1mm step up your step over is huge.
Can you send a screenshot of why scallop didn't work for you, I'm still not 100% the beauty of scallop is it keeps a nice consistent step over across the flowing geometry improving surface finish.
@Richard.stubley so this is my scallop toolpath. i have messed around with it but this is all i could get.
I have changed it so the tool containment is set to on centre because when it was set to outside it would go down to the bottom of the part.
This is my geometry tab:
@adam.j.mclachlan you will want to play with your bottom height and lift that up to restrict how low it cuts.
Hopefully you can see what I did in my project.
@Richard.stubley I have been messing around with different tool paths and i eventually tried the steep and shallow one. It has worked the way i wanted it to after a few adjustments.
The only thing i can see being a problem is the side of the tool rubbing on the part when its against the wall like this:
I thought of using an undercutting end mills like these ones:
Any suggestions you have would be appreciated, thank you.
Your contour tool path leaves section of vertical wall that needs to be done with ball end mill along with corner fillet and curved surfaces. It is inevitable to hit that wall with full end mill length when surfacing fillet so what I would do is use 6 mm end mill instead of 1/8.
1/8 tool is too weak to be used at full length against vertical wall.
I added Trace with tool to the left side of geometry and purpose is to prep the vertical wall leaving .1 stock, running at lower feed rate.
Using Blend for more uniform passes, having only .1 mm of radial stock on vertical wall, tool should not have any chatter or break when it hits the wall while running over edge of fillet.
EDIT:
After uploading edited file I noticed that contour tool path rounds the edges of chamfers, I turned on "make sharp corners", smoothing and feed optimization and didn't see any difference in outcome, you may wanna take closer look at that.
I was going to suggest using steep and shallow as this toolpath was specifically designed for tackling geometry such as this. I have generated a toolpath that should work what you're after and you won't need to buy relieved shank tooling. All i did was specify the model geometry as the selected faces as shown in the attached image, i then specifed the avoid geometry as shown in the 2nd attached image. You can then see the outcome in the 3rd attached image. Hopefully this gives you what you're after and you won't need to purchase special tooling.
Mat
Hi @mathew.hutton, i had previously tried what you suggested but i did it again just to make sure i wasn't missing anything but the problem is it doesn't cut the excess material at the top so when it is cutting down the bottom the shaft of the tool is cutting instead of the bottom like this.
This is where it would only cut so far:
and this is it cutting with the shaft:
I will keep trying different methods, but thank you, its appreciated.
I played with Steep and shallow with Parallel but could not get tool to start at top of the model and work its way down. As a result it hits vertical wall at the end of each pass over curved surface then feeds upwards to top of the model.
That is ineffective in gradually taking out stock left by rougher, not the best choice.
I was under impression that everyone has access to same options, turned on in preferences, but if you don't have Blend you can use Scallop or Parallel.
I don't particularly like Scallop in this case because it divides selected surfaces into sections, starts on outside edges and finishes in the middle, I like end to end tool passes better.
The advantage of using Trace is that you can take balk of the stock from vertical wall in one pass at low feed rate, even use two passes with radial stock to leave tailored to conditions, such as material type, then let Scallop, Blend or Parallel swing away without any ill effect on tool or finish each time tool kisses vertical wall with full length of flutes which is evident on each side of selected machining area.
By using same tool to do Trace and profiling, you can leave as little as .0005 stock to blend with corner fillet and finish tool path.
You have to pick one way of finishing that has best result, going over it with another strategy is not necessary.
As far as tool size, you wanna use tool that has radius just under the size of smallest fillet, so 6 mm is a lot stronger then 1/8 and it counts when tool meets vertical wall at its longest stretch.
Here is my experiment with Steep and shallow, which I don't like. file attached.
Are you saying you don't have this ?
