squiggley Spiral toolpath

[programming2C78B]

this is just a .03 rad around a perfect 1.6" dia circle.

[seth.madore]

Does a small negative offset or tighten tolerance effect this in any manner?

Share sample file?

[programming2C78B]

tolerance was .0005". File was 100kb.

Making it higher just makes the entire path more jagged. 

Its also there if I do it as Concentric circles. This should definitely be a very smooth and simple operation! 

this is .00001". File size is 235kb

[seth.madore]

"Additional Offset" on the Geometry tab. Barring that, there are some surface triangulation options buried in Compare and Edit, I find those are also helpful 

[programming2C78B]

heres file.

[programming2C78B]

1/2 ing the Triangulation does make it smoother, but in my mind if you select Concentric Circles it should be a FIXED Z height until it steps up. 

[seth.madore]

Surface Triangulation defaults to tolerance * .5.

I prefer tolerance * .05

Yes, calculation is a little bit longer, but result is this (no other changes)

 

[programming2C78B]

I see that too - but why or how would a person know they have to edit some shadow-setting? 

Ramp is only set to *0.25 and makes a perfect path for this! Unfortunately you guys didnt add the Avoid option to it so it's harder to constrain and it wants to do everything. 

[seth.madore]

I "think" the Avoid option is coming to this strategy at some point in the future, but can't say with 100% certainty.

As for the tolerance; "usually", it works fine and there's no need to adjust. There are cases, such as this, that we need to tighten things up a bit, and this is the mechanism they implemented. 

To the unasked question of "why don't they just set this as default", I think the answer is consideration of time. Tightening up that much does have an impact on larger parts.

[programming2C78B]

If spiral is set to 0.5 (but should be 0.05) and ramp is .25 I wonder what all the other ones are set as, and how many issues are caused by them? About the only thing I prefer in MasterCam is the ability to do a simple 2D Sweep for things like this. Select my part OD, select the rad contour and you're done. 

[seth.madore]

Oh, they're all set to .5 tolerance as far as I'm aware. I've gone thru my toolpaths and set default on all of them to .05. But, I also do rather small parts with limited surfacing needs, so I seldom notice a hit in performance.

[programming2C78B]

I just changed a Scallop from 0.5 to 0.25 and it made the operation size 20% SMALLER while looking identical. 

*0.05 makes it 30% smaller! Is there really a difference in computation time on this? It's still all too fast for me to even start counting. 

Certainly, Adaptive toolpaths take more time then any surfacing ones I've seen.