3D Adaptive Clearing vs 3D Pocket Clearing

[calexpavel]

As i understand the advantage of adaptive vs pocket is that with adaptive i can make deeper roughing stepdown cuts which should end up with less machining time than pocket clearing thanks to the deeper cuts. 

I've read that i can cut as deep as the flute length. I am cutting wood and my flute length is 76mm. The rule for wood is to cut half of the tool diameter, which is 12/2 in my case. So could i increase my roughing stepdown from 6mm to 76mm just because i use adaptive clearing? What does this strategy do to allow for such deep cuts?

I guess this strategy is made for cutting metal and usually the flute lengths for metal is short.

I'm trying to understand how deep i can cut and what is the advantage of this cutting strategy. I don't want to risk breaking my bits because i understood wrong.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

I've attached the file just in case.

[johnswetz1982 · Accepted solution]

One of the ideas behind Adaptive is that it uses the entire or close to the entire flute length of the tool. You want to use the full length because you paid for it and if you only take shallow cuts you wear the bottom of the flutes dull while the top of the flutes are still sharp. Secondly the Adaptive toolpaths use "trichordal milling" where the radial engagement and the angle of engagement are constantly changing so the there is an even and constant pressure/load on the side of the tool. Third, since you are taking a shallow radial cut you can increase you federate so that you actually end up removing more material than a bunch of offset passes with bigger radial engagement but smaller axial engagement. In the Pocketing tool path (I think, I don't use it often) will take offset cuts where the tool load will sharply change at entry/exit/and corners. Not much of a problem in wood or styrofoam but bad in metal. I think the morph option makes it more of a trichordal path but I dont know. The last tip is to not use tool orientation unless you are doing multi axis work. It is not needed.

[calexpavel]

Thanks John.

I found this video that explains it really nice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JMlrT1tNy8