Adaptive Clearing Stock Contours in Boundary Containment

[Anonymous]

I try to force my adaptive clearing toolpath to helical ramp into the part and work its way inside out, for safety reasons as working from outside in is unsafe is stock is not exactly on size or in location the program thinks it is. For this reason, I use boundary to keep tool inside part forcing a helical entry. My problem comes when I have shapes like attached below, I use silhouette and that works for most of the time (square parts) but odd shapes it follows inside the contours and leaves much material. I feel like if I had an option to contain using stock contours, i could avoid this completely. Any thoughts, ideas ? 

Thanks in advance.

[cj.abraham]

In this case, I suggest modeling the stock as a solid. This will allow you to select the top stock contour as boundary and then setting the boundary to be tool on center or inside will force the tool to use a helical ramp entry.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the input. My bandaid right now for this is to just draw a rectangle where the stock is in x and y, then using that as selection containment, but you need to be pretty precise in the rectangle position and size for safe running of the program...

Maybe this is a good topic for the idea station then, I think there should be a more efficient and safe way to force helical entry for adaptive. Its all good and find for second ops or pre squared blocks, but most shops are trying to get away from manual machining and that means starting with saw cut stock, would be nice to work from inside out on these using stock contour as containment. After all, adaptive is all about avoiding spikes in tool load. Thats the only way without perfectly square stock.

[cj.abraham]

If your stock is defined in CAM oversized to start, working from the outside-in will be safe because the first few passes will be light. Also, the stock body can be modeled and the stock definition set to "from solid" in the setup to create safe toolpaths for any stock shape that is not rectangular. 

In your case, the rectangle would be quite accurate if the boundary is set as the top rectangular edge of the solid body you've defined as the stock.