Excess Material in Pocket ToolPath

[Tony Tran]

Hi guys,

 

Whenever I use Pocket ToolPath, I still got a little excess material although my stepover percentage is only 50% of Tool Diameter. Is there any way I can get rid of.

 

 

Thanks for helping me,

 

Tony Tran

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Hello Tony,

 

I am not sure what version you are using. This info applies only up to and including X2 MR2. I would imagine X3 is the same as I have not heard different.

 

The "High Speed" cutting method will do a better in this regard. I usually use it with "trochoidal cuts" turned off as I am not usually cutting hardened material. You can just turn them off in the defaults if you want.

 

Mike

[Thad]

Tony,

 

I get this all the time and IT ANNOYS ME, to put it mildly. I've found that if you DON'T use a finish pass, it happens much less frequently; but then the cutter drags up the wall on retract. Bad calculation on MC's part. I give it a stepover of .700 and it steps over 1.100. This is on a simple rectangular pocket! WTF? It's much worse with button-type insert cutters. I use 70% of the actual cutting diameter and I get material left of the floor of a pocket. It drastically increases program time, having to backplot every path, single stepping through with quick verify on, to make sure it doesn't step over too far. Ridiculous! Unfortunately, with the new 2D toolpaths coming out, the priority of fixing "the old stuff" seems to get pushed farther down the list. Since I've got some time now, I'll send a file in to QC.

 

To answer your question, make the stepover smaller until the floor gets entirely cleaned up.

 

Thad

[Tony Tran]

Mike: I am using X2 MR2. My boss wants to upgrade to X3 but I wonder if X3 is big difference from X2.

 

Thad: Thank for giving me a hint. Pocket function really pisses me off so I give up. I go back to my own way is to create 2D toolpath and it works perfectly. Hopefully, X3 is better so that I don't need to spend much time on pockets.

 

Good weekend,

 

Tony Tran

[Redfire427]

I think it's been that way since version 3 which is hard to believe. We use the highspeed horizontal with 40% set as the stepover and that seems to be the only way to guarantee you won't leave any upstands.

[ChristerP]

I don't think that you necessarily need to reduce stepover to get it all clean... It might work with a higher percentage as well. I often use like 70%, but when this occur, I normally try a somewhat lower value. If that doesn't do it, I try somethink like 72% which might do the trick as well...

[Thad]

From QC...

 

quote:

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I logged it as CNC 00040357

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Thad