Contour a circle

[rsbeadle]

Thad, I do what you are asking regularly. What I do is figure the lead-in, lead out using line length and arc sweep so that the tool begins in the center. For an .811 hole with 1/2 inch tool I set tangnet line length to .1415 and arc radius to .014 and sweep to about 95.5 degrees. This should put the tool in or at least near the center. If you prefer to have a perpendicular entry set perp line length to .1555 (half of .811-.5) and set radius to 0.0. This should work in V8 or V9.

[JAMMAN]

I did several 30mm holes a week with a 25mm diamond router bit. All your answers are trying to deal with cutter comp in controller. I am thuroughly convinced that comp in control is un necessary and didn't use it for 4 years. What you backplot is what you get, and I never got an error message.

[Thad]

Jamman,

 

Agreed, but they didn't have an onsize cutter.

 

Thad

[P_Scott]

thad,

I've also created a circle at the Origin with a dia. of .811". I've contoured it and have it leading in from the center of the circle by chaining the center point I created before the contour. Everything appears to work perfectly, code and all. I've done this using V7.2C. Updating software tends to fix many "issues". The last point release for V8 was V8.1.1 and it tended to fix many issues which users were experiencing. All point releases within a major version of Mastercam are free of charge. Working with the most current software often halves the time it would have taken using the older version. This would allow you to produce programs faster and get rid of backlog. Programming in V7 now, with V9 available, is like cutting a tree down with a hand saw (V7) rather than a chain saw (V9). The hand saw works, but you're exhausted and the chain saw cut 10 trees in the same amount of time as 1 with the hand saw. HTH