Adding cuts to shallow areas

[g huns]

I'm cutting some runners in a mold cavity that are full round, but tapered. The taper is pretty slight, no more than a degree. I rough them out with surface rough contour to within .002 using .005 stepdowns. I then would like to finish with surface finish countour using .002 stepdown and using add cuts to shallow areas with some ridiculous stepdown like .0001 and a .002 limiting stepover. This makes the tapered bottom nice and smooth(at least it did in V9). It's been sitting here for about 15 minutes thinking about it. The lower left corner of the screen says FTZ generating zcuts 16.2% and just stays there, then an error pops up that says, error opening blah blah blahtemp.rgn. If I set the min stepdown to something like .0005, it works fine. This is the toolpath I use the most and it has always worked even with super small stepdowns. Anybody ever run into this?

[Steve Arteman]

G huns,

I haven't seen this yet, but ave you tried surface finish blend, if this works on your runner configuration you may change your ways. This toolpath is becoming one of my favorite.

Steve

[g huns]

I'm thinking it's from using a cutter that's too close to the smallest diameter of the runner. The runner right before the gate is .125. I was using a .125 ball end mill. If I use a .093 ball it works. I usually use the .093 but didn't have one in the toolchanger, so I though I'd just use the .125 and tell MC that it's .124, but that didn't work either. I haven't had much luck with blend, but haven't had time to really play with it yet.

[Henk]

g huns,

 

Normally i make these runner with 2D-Swept.

[lynnz]

g huns,

Sometimes when I have trouble with FZT toolpaths erroring out, I turn it off by running the toolpath config c-hook. (TPcfg.dll) Then uncheck FZT.

Then I can get it to run with no problems.

This worked in V9 and X as well.

 

lynnz

[HevyMetl]

Shallow finish on the contour page is not as efficient as the true shallow options. Cut your contour passes and then select the shallow toolpath. Set it it 3d collapse and the angle up to 30°'s. Give it a step over of .0015 and you will get a great surface finish wihtout a lot of extra bouncing around that the surface finish countour shallow gives. It also eliminates alot of the FZT calculations and speeds up regeneration drastically.

[g huns]

Thanks John. I did try that. I did get the countour to work when I switched cutters and I still liked the finish better than what I got with shallow. Probably took longer using countour but that just gives me some time to get the next TP around. Thanks all.