Pencil machining

[Kurt]

I use v7.2b. My pencil toolpath does not give

a smooth pass. Instead it keeps on hopping

up and down. Also my leftover toolpath is also not smooth . I find some small deviations in the toolpath. What is the recommended tolerance? Anything else to be changed apart from the tolerance ?

[camguy]

Are you using a cutter that is close to the fillet radius on the part? if the surface fillet rad is greater than the rad of the cutter, no toolpath will be generated in this area. Try using a larger cutter. For the leftover toolpath, try filtering the toolpath with .oo1 tolerance. this will smooth out the path.

hope this is of use.

[Kurt]

Hi Camguy,

There is no fillet between the surfaces.

[Kenneth Potter]

Sometimes i try run backplot pencil trace only/display/save as geometry/ edit out the unwanted tool paths/use contour 3d on that geometry with the same tool.

[d0gFartz]

Make sure you have the latest surfacing patches off the Mastercam.com site also

[Allan Brown]

I noticed you are still on V7.2.

Perhaps have your Mastercam reseller run the toolpath in V8. If the improvements are significant, it may be worth updating.

[This message has been edited by Dave Thomson (edited 11-07-2000).]