Helix entry in a pocket?

[Jon @ NOWHERE]

I'm using a high feed cutter, which is awesome by the way, cutting a pocket with a .02 depth of cut. I want to use a helix entry because I can't drill an entry hole bigger than the cutter itself. I need it to make about take about 4 helical cuts at .005 each cut to reach the .02 DOC. I can't figure out the Helix entry parameters to get what I want. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

I'm using X3

 

Thanks

Jon

[Mic6]

Maybe play with the Plunge Angle in the Entry motion tab?

[Jon @ NOWHERE]

Thanks Mic that worked. Had to play around with it to get it exactly how I wanted it but that was fine.

[Mic6]

I'm running a pocket toolpath on a cavity that has already been hogged out. My top of stock and feed plane are Z-. Is this a bug because I can't for the life of me get my tool to do a helical entry to the bottom of the pocket.

[B. Rad]

Mic6,

I am doing the same thing on a part right now (finishing the bottom of a pocket that has been previosly hogged out, is this correct?). What i did was made a seperate pocket operation with the top of stock .010" above the bottom of my pocket and and the feed plane incremential and clearance plane equal to the feed plane of the previous operation. I do this when I finish a pocket with a different tool. This way you don't start the helix from the origial feed plane. I don't know if I answered your question.

 

Brad Craig

[Mic6]

Thanks Brad, I figured mine out. I did basically what you did. I used incremental feed plane and the like, but no matter what values I used on my helix page I couldnt get a helix, but I finally tweaked my stepover % and it worked. Thanks for lookin' Busy in Watsonville?

[B. Rad]

Mic,

I forgot about the % step over. In a tight pocket I will put the max at just below 50% to get just enough mtl out of the way for the cutter and set the xy clearance to at or just over the finish pass if ther is one.

 

We are busy in Watsonville with a bunch of new products for this year. www.crgmoto.com

 

 

Thanks for asking.

What is LMSSC?