What is the best way to chamfer a 2.5D profile? TRACE is treating ARCS as SPLINES.

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to chamfer a 2.5D profile by using TRACE.  Problem is, when it comes to an ARC, it treats it like a SPLINE and puts a bunch of points in the toolpath. 

Am I doing something wrong?  Is there a better strategy to us to chamfer a 2.5D profile that contains only LINES and ARCS?

Thanks,

gm

[seth.madore]

Chamfer toolpath 🙂

After that, 2D Contour with Chamfer tool selected and chamfer data defined on Passes tab.

If you still have questions, can you share your file here?
File > Export > Save to local folder, return to thread and attach the .f3d file in your reply

[Anonymous]

Thanks for replying Seth.

Attached is a simple model to illustrate my question.  The actual project is fairly complex and I currently use all 3, (TRACE, 2D PROFILE, and CHAMFER), to accomplish the various chamfer operations. 

However, It occurred to me that I can easily accomplish a lot of the chamfer operations by simply using TRACE.  The problem is the TRACE strategy seems to treat all curves as SPLINEs, even if they're modeled as ARCs, and this causes data starving issues with my older controller.  (I am using SMOOTHING to mitigate this problem a little.)

So, is there a strategy that will follow features the way that TRACE does without treating 2D ARCs as SPLINEs 

Or, is there a way I can force the TRACE strategy to treat ARCs as ARCs?

Thanks,

gm.

[seth.madore]

Trace will treat all arcs as splines, unfortunately. For this sample piece, I would suggest using Chamfer on the flat sections and Trace on the sloped sections. You could also give Blend a try, but you would need to use a Ball Endmill for that to work, which may just produce more code than Trace

[Anonymous]

Thanks Seth for the quick reply.  I was afraid you would say that...that's exactly what I've had to do.

I'm no programmer but, wouldn't it be pretty straight forward to simply have TRACE recognize ARCs?  I mean, it already follows an X-Y-Z line by two simple points...one at the beginning and one at the end of the line segment, regardless of the Z position.  I would think it would be easy to differentiate a true ARC from a SPLINE, and in doing so, TRACE could become a much more efficient strategy.

gm.