Surfacing question.

[c-hook]

Hey all-

 

It's been a while since I posted, but here goes...I was wondering if there was a way to set up a surfacing tool path (V9.1) so that it would mill past the surface boundry, in the past I have always just offset the boundries or drawn the part bigger so that the end mill would cut past the edges of the part, sort of a work around, but now I have a part that I don't particularly want to re-draw , so any help would be appreciated.

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

This is "X" but you'll have similar dialog in 9.

 

Try in the gap settings box where I've highlighted with the red box.

 

Particularly the tangential line length.

 

[c-hook]

Hey Matt, I think that did the trick, I have never used those settings before, I will play around with them to see what I can come up with, Thanks alot!

[Thad]

Matt,

 

Doesn't that only affect the gap ends? For example, if you had a square block with shape on the top and you used a finish parallel cutting at 0 degrees, only the ends in the X axis would be over extended. You would not overlap the part in the Y axis since there is no gap there. Or is the simple fix to use an angle such as 45, which would create gaps all over the part? But what is the surface doesn't lend itself well to a 45 degree cut?

 

Does that make sense?

 

Thad

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

Yes Thad. I agree. It's not a solution for every situation but sometimes it gets what I am looking for. Using a cut angle helps too as you said but still isn't perfect...

 

Is there another way ?

 

The only other thing I can think of is Use Moldplus to extend the surfaces... Fast and easy...

[c-hook]

What I did was use a flowline toolpath and extended only the tangential line length, I left everything else at 0, and it compensted in the x and y. In this particular case it worked nicely. Thanks again.

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

[Thad]

Thanks Matt. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. I usually just extend the surfaces. Habit, I guess.

 

 

Thad

[LansB]

Yeah, extend surface edges in V9....

 

Fence surface in X!