Finish of bottom surfaces

[JFGuffie]

Hello

I have been struggling to optimize this item, since no matter what kind of toolpath I'm trying to use, I have a lot of rapid retracts, which is time consuming.. See pictures here below.. 

Does there exist a 4-5 axis toolpath, which can make all bottom surface just following the bottom surface, without retracting all the time.. I have tried "Rotary, Rotary Advanced, Unified, Flowline and can't get anything better than example here below.. But I'm far from expert in 5-axis toolpath, so maybe some of you guys have a better suggestion.. 

 

[JParis]

Morph between curves?

[JFGuffie]

4 minutes ago, JParis said:

Morph between curves?

 

Was looking for that too, but can't find it in 2023?.. From what I could read it was replaced/merged into Unified, but can't get that to work.. 

 

[JFGuffie]

And with Unified, it doesn't look any better.. 

 

[Aaron Eberhard]

 

24 minutes ago, JFGuffie said:

Was looking for that too, but can't find it in 2023?.. From what I could read it was replaced/merged into Unified, but can't get that to work..

Just choose two curves in Unified and choose Morph as the pattern for it.

Any chance you can post a file?

[JFGuffie]

The file is attached heSample.mcamre.. I removed the rest of toolpath, since it makes it very heavy...

[Aaron Eberhard]

Also, what pattern are you really looking for?  Do you want to do that entire hub area highlighted in the first pic?  You'll have better luck doing each "side" of the blade as one toolpath, otherwise you're going to have a LOT of wasted time and a super-smooth polished look where you have to run over the area in front of the blade a bunch of times:

 

In that case, I'd split the hub surface up into two.

[Aaron Eberhard]

7 minutes ago, JFGuffie said:

The file is attached heSample.mcamre.. I removed the rest of toolpath, since it makes it very heavy...

I'll try to take a look at this after some meetings this morning.

[Aaron Eberhard]

Take a look at this and see if it'll work better for you.  I didn't have much time here between meetings with customers, but I slapped a Unified > Morph on it (Guides would give you approximately the same results).  I turned on Smooth corners (so it doesn't do a 90° bend in the corners) and I also extended it.   Also, I changed your linking to be a blend in small gaps, so it transitions nicely instead of "direct." 

The only other change is Op2 is the same as Op1, but I put on collision control for you so it won't gouge the blades.Sample - Unified.zip

One other thing you can do is get fancy with trimming the "corners" to make the toolpath smoother, and then do a small toolpath in front of the impellers, something like this:

I didn't have time to play that much and I didn't want to leave you hanging until this afternoon when I would have had a chance to do it.

[JFGuffie]

Thanks Aaron.. That was what I was looking for.. Very helpful to see how to do it correctly.. 

Sorry, but I'm sitting in Europe, so our time zones are quite different, that's why I first respond now..