Steep and Shallow ignoring contact only

[Joshua.mursic]

Hello everyone, hoping to maybe get some tips or tricks or clarification for this issue.

I am milling a triangle mesh file and using steep and shallow to do the finishing. I have tried to enable both steep and shallow in the passes tab, and have enabled contact only, but the passes are not being limited and are generating all the way to the bottom of the stock, even where there is no contact. Am I misunderstanding the contact only button? Or is this not working as intended?

[a.laasW8M6T]

I believe its talking about contacting in the XY direction, but I could be wrong, it may indeed not be working correctly

3D contour behaves the same way, normally you would limit by Heights but it looks like that won't give a satisfactory result in this case.

Another option is to use the Trim function to remove parts of the toolpath you don't need

[Joshua.mursic]

Thank you for the suggestions, part of the issue is that when i set Steep and Shallow to use only shallow, to prevent the unnecessary cuts, i get this horrible jagged line that ruins the surface finish. I assume this is because the model is a triangle model and this is a steep region? But I am not sure. The trim function would work great, but i am trying to create these operations programmatically using the API, and using the trim function isn't really an option for that unfortunately.

[TrollTuner2]

Make a surface patch on that boundary.    Untrim/Extend it a good bit.    Use that as an avoid surface.   That keeps the tool from going down too far when the Z varies.      This might be a bit harder with a mesh.  Might take a few vertexes.  

[Joshua.mursic]

Thanks @TrollTuner2 , I will try and create a patch, you are right, it will be difficult because it is a mesh body, getting the silhouette boundary is difficult.

[a.laasW8M6T · Accepted solution]

The "Scallop" only in Steep and Shallow doesn't work properly in steep areas for some reason(Its been reported already), If you use the  plain Scallop toolpath however it should work fine.

[Joshua.mursic]

Thank you