Trace Toolpath Problems

[Anonymous]

Sorry about the vague title, but I am having several problems with the trace toolpath. I'm trying to do the exact same thing as xfireshotz was doing here-https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-manufacture/reducing-tear-out-on-dovetail-joints/m-p/68052...

I am completely unable to get the toolpath to function properly. I followed the example for Trace that was given in the link. I'm not too worried about the pass extension extending both directions from the stock, I can work around that if necessary, though I am curious why it's doing that for me, and not in the screencast. What is absolutely killing me is the cutter retracting while in the workpiece. I have "keep tool down" enabled. I've tried everything I can think of. I know that I can edit the Gcode manually, or that there are other workarounds. The point is I need to be able to save a template that I can use on different parts without having to go through a lot of work. I've tried this with a square endmill, in the off chance that the dovetail cutter was creating the problem.

I'm not sure if this is a bug, or just me. Usually I get stuck on stupid and can't see something pretty obvious that I'm missing . Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here's a link to the part:

https://a360.co/306t1Bp

[seth.madore · Accepted solution]

May I ask why you need to use the Trace toolpath? What is the ultimate goal of what you are looking for?

Changing your Retract Height to "Selected Contour" (Heights tab) and enabling "Axial Offset Passes" on the Passes tab (with a small value of .0001") will give you darn close to what I think you are after. File is attached.

[Anonymous]

I figured that using trace would be the easiest, and when I found a video showing exactly what I was trying to do, I thought it would be easy to duplicate. I have no reason to have to use trace.

The goal is to have the cutter enter both sides of the workpiece independently, so that it only cuts from the outside-in. This will help mitigate tear out of the wood. As long as the tool can enter and exit the work from the same side without passing all the way through the workpiece, it should work fine.

 I still can't understand why "keep tool down" isn't keeping the tool down. 

[Anonymous]

Thank you, all that was required was changing the retract height. I fooled around with this before, but I was getting an error the way I was trying to do it. The selected contours did the trick.