Beginner - how to finish the detail after adaptive clearing

[louisecmparker]

Hello Everyone, 

I'm hoping someone can help me please - I'm creating a woodblock stamp as an experiment. I've got the stamp parts sticking out in relief and have applied some 2d adaptive clearing with 2 flat end mills. I now want to get into the detail with a v carve bit. I need to use chamfered edges, I think, and my first thought was to use engrave but that clears away the part of the stamp that I need in relief, I want to engrave around the edges of the sketch. I've tried doing a derived contour pass but that hasn't worked as it doesn't seem to cut out the remain material. I need the fish parts to stick out 2mm from the block as these will be the bits that make the impression. Please can someone enlighten me as to how to do this? The result doesn't have to be perfect and for the moment I'm limited by the tools that I have.

I have attached my file so you can see what I'm up to.

Any help greatly appreciated 😊

[louisecmparker]

Thank you so much, this is so helpful! Also, thank you for teaching me a bit more about the tools, I will have a look at getting some wider angle v bits for experimenting on finish. 
Have a great rest of your weekend and thanks again - so chuffed that I’m going to give this a go on the machine today! 

[louisecmparker]

Hello @a.laasW8M6T ,

It's me again. Please tell me to bog off if this is asking too much. So, I've been testing out the v bit and it's not the right tool for the material, it churns up the lino when I get too deep. I think I can fix it by reducing stepdown and speed - I had a whole problem with my machine and not being able to control spindle speed even when I edit the g code and I'm waiting to hear from manufacturer. I had another thought which is to try using a slimmer end mill, but before I buy one thought I would create the toolpaths. For the life of me, I cannot get some parts of the stamp to mill with adaptive clearing even though they are bigger than the tool bits I'm using. Am I being dense? How can I get rid of them? Should I be using a different function for that final pass?

I've done a shallower pass with the finer tool as I don't really need to clear as much material, but I do want to get rid of those pesky bits. My final thought was to do a very shallow trace around the design and then finish by hand, but I'd like to avoid that if I can. Do you have any good advice?

[a.laasW8M6T]

Hi 

The rest machining function for 2D Adaptive isn't the best, it doesn't actually look at what stock is left it just tries to guess based on the diameter of the previous tool you specify.

This often works pretty well on relatively simple geometry but falls over pretty bad on something more complex like what you have.

What I suggest is to use 3D adaptive instead as the rest machining for that actually looks at the remaining stock to determine what's left to machine.

I have uploaded here your file with the 2 subsequent tools using 3d adaptive with rest machining and a 2D contour to clean up the walls.

You could realistically use 3D adaptive for the first op too  but you set the rest machining source to "From Setup Stock"

Another option to consider is to use 3D Pocket instead of adaptive as this can work quite well in soft materials, you may need to adjust your feeds n speeds from adaptive.

3D pocket generates waaay quicker than adaptive

I have attached that example too

If you have access to compressed air, setting up an air blast pointed at the tool can help with soft materials that tend to melt like vinyl

[louisecmparker]

You are a legend! Thank you for this.