Parallel Path - Extend Tangent

[Anonymous]

Sometimes I need to cut just one or two faces on a model. For example to cut a male fillet that you could envision cutting with a corner rounding endmill. I use the parallel path, but I would like the cutter to extend past the end of the face tangent to the path by a specified amount so the path doesn't end right at the edge of the surface. I don't see a nice way to extend the path by say 1/8 inch on each end. Am I missing something?

[fonsecr · Accepted solution]

There is no tangential extension feature available. However, you can either extend the faces to be machined or maybe use big lead radii to get some similar effect - you might need to choose "No contact" so you force the leads for each cut.

Note that it is gennerally unsafe to only select a few faces for machining as the remaining faces wont be considered for the toolpath calculation. So you have to verify extra carefully that you didnt make a mistake.

[Anonymous]

I totally understand that picking and choosing faces requires caution. I'd extend the faces but I need to understand how to manage this type of temporary geometry as I plan to do all tool paths for all sides of a component from a single file. I believe this is the expected workflow seeing as it is possible to have multiple setups in a single file. I think this is an experience thing. I'll get there.

Thanks for the help. I'll explore the No Contact setting. Maybe you can explain what that setting does?

This reminds me, contextual help for items in the Toolpath dialogs would be very helpful.

[fonsecr]

The default behavior for the 3D strategies is to stay in contact with the part as much as possible when moving between cuts. You can turn off this behavior by selecting No contact as the Transition Type.

I need to check why the contextual help is not showing up with most details. This is not intended.