Gap Motion

[jeff]

I am curious as to what most of you people use for the gap motion.

Broken,Direct,Smooth,Follow Surface(s).

For some reason it will not allow me to choose the follow surface option.

I mainly use Rough and Finish Flowline for my surfacing programs,and use broken for the setting.

 

[Quickmike]

I usually use these toolpaths in this order.

1 surface rough pocket

2 surface rough restmill

3 surface rough contour

4 surface finish parallel

My gap is usually set at about .500(inch mode).

I usually don't use broken in order to cut down on the lifts. When I use surface rough countour I'll increse it to cut down on lifts. Depending on which surfacing toolpath, it can help control whether the tool stays down or gets a "lift". Look up gap settings in the help and it explains it in there. I would try to explain what the "gap" is but I think the help file does a better job than I could.

[Fred from Université de Sherbrooke]

For my part, I use smooth. Combined with the tangential setting, it is very smooth on the machine.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Usually I use Surface rough pocket, surface finish flowline and surface finish scallop. Depending on the topology of the surface(s) I will use smooth or follow surface. To get the tool to start off the surface I use the Direction Switch and to make it go off the surface when machining I use the tangential settins as Fred does.

 

HTH

[Zero]

I usually use Rough Pocket or Contour depending on the part and material. Then use Finish Shallow, (again, depending on the part either 3d collapse or zig-zag) and Finish Contour, or maybe sometimes Finish Scallop. Then usually a Leftover or Pencil. I either use follow surfaces or broken for the gap motion and try to keep the gap size fairly large to keep my tool down as much as possible.

 

I usually have a large # of surfaces that "don't form a row" so I barely ever use Flowline. I have been checking out this new Project Blend path, and it seems pretty slick .

[jeff]

My problem is that I only have level 2 and can only do 1 stupid surface at a time.

some jobs I need to do Z level roughing on multiple surfaces and it's a pain.

I have a job where there are 32 surfaces and can only do 1 at a time.

Oh think of the fun I have programming that one.

It's a good size part too,50" x 50" x 9" with a pocket that every wall is 5degree taper even the floor.

When we first received this job I only had level 1.

Very difficult to do back then!!!

[Zero]

ouch

[jeff]

LOL I know,it sucked big time!