Need Help With Toolpath

[Anonymous]

I am trying to use a ball endmill to clear out the excess stock. I am having trouble creating a toolpath that will cut the radius and face together. What is the best way to create a toolpath that will take care of the radius' along with the standing material in between. New to the program so have a lot of learning to do, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[seth.madore · Accepted solution]

I'd think Parallel would be the ticket.

Hopefully this is wood or some other soft material. Roughing out with a ball end is an aggressive request on such a tool, as that is not it's expected purpose....

If Parallel doesn't solve your issue, share the part here and we can take a look at it and make better suggestions

[DarthBane55]

I would probably use a roughing endmill to rough out the flat stuff between the radius, depending on material and size of this using 2d contour or adaptive.  Then parallel toolpath going across to do the 2 radius, that would be pretty quick.

If you just wanted to finish that whole thing with a ballmill use parallel, that will work very well here.

[Anonymous]

Thank You! Parallel seems to do the trick. Will play around with it and see how it does. Was told by higher up to program everything with ball endmill otherwise rough milling the middle and finishing the sides would be the go to.  

[Anonymous]

Spoke to soon.... I've attached the file with the parallel profile. Please let me know what you come up with or if you can create the path quickly for me to check out what im doing wrong. Thanks again for the fast reply! 

[seth.madore]

Like this?

I'm uploading a Screencast that walks through my steps. I'd suggest spending some time with the tutorials and some good 'ol YouTube 😉

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[Anonymous]

This is perfect! Curious how to add an offset for my tool to start farther off the part? The way its set up now the center of the endmill starts at the edge of the part making it cut way to much on the starting pass. How would I add an offset to ease into the cuts?

[s.noke71]

could you lay it on its side and use 2d contour?

[seth.madore]

So....that's going to require a bit more in-depth video. It involves making patch surfaces, extending them, selecting those as your chain and defining that as Model selection inside the toolpath. Not an entry level textual explanation

[s.noke71]

Hi Seth,

Is this in the wrong thread?

[seth.madore]

Eh, not so much. It's a continuation of the same part in question and regarding the Parallel toolpath. I've just not gotten around to the video. If you have time, feel free 😉

[DarthBane55]

I don't have time for a video myself, but if it can help, for what Seth was saying:

-go in surface menu, do an offset of 0 of the surfaces to machine.

-click extend, and pick the edges of your surfaces to extend by what you want.

-in the toolpath, check the box called "model", and select those faces.

-For the containment, pick "selection" and choose the outer edges of your surfaces, with a value of -0.001" (or 0.001" I'm not sure, but this ensures the tool won't drop off the outer edges), with tool center on boundary.

That should be about it, from the top of my head.  I hope it gets you going until the video comes in... 🙂

[seth.madore]

Fine fine, here's the video 🙂