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Plunge Milling


Thoob
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Hi guys, I have a deep through slot that i need to do and my cutter rep suggested to plunge mill it. I was looking at the plunge mill toolpath and it seems quite overwhelming with the settings. Is there an easy way to plot out the toolpath? Its a slot that is 1.1875" wide and 4.5" deep. Is there a way I can specify a scallop height and let it plunge away? Thanks.

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  • 1 year later...

For simple 2D profiles, draw a centereline chain then use the command

 

Create/Point/Segment to create points at the desires stepover, then apply a drill toolpath to the points

:thumbsup: Works very well.....

 

You can also create a pocket routine, save the backplot as geometry, then create your Points and drill cycle.. :smoke:

 

 

What material??

Seco makes awesome Plunge Milling Cutters: Seco Plunge Mills

Crazy speeds and feeds in aluminum.... :blink:

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I didn't even know there was a plunge toolpath, I've been using drill path for plunge since the beginning of my career. I don't see it. OK just found it in surface paths.

 

Anyhow +1 for drill points for plunge roughing, works awesome.

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I am going to look at the samples and update them to X6.

 

It looks like I tried to upload a couple of them when I was having troubles uploading to the FTP, they are 0 byte files.

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on the FTP in the X6 folder

 

PLUNGE SAMPLES.MCX-6

 

If you look at the levels, there are 3 different ways to set up and use the tool path

 

1. Create a boundary and pocket it with a dummy OP, then use the nci to get the boundary

 

2. Using a grid of points, made with the grid chook

 

3. Using surfaces and a containment boundary.

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One thing that I recommend you do with Plunge Milling is turn off "Rapid Retract" and input a slower Retract feedrate. I had trouble on a few jobs because rapiding in Z would cause the inserts to chip or crack prematurely.

 

In the Advanced 5X Toolpath there is also an option to plunge mill. It allows you to "back off" the wall before retracting, so you can rapid without dragging the inserts. I use this path quite often on 3 axis jobs.

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Hum you guys do it totally different than me. I always made 3D toolpaths with center line. I always thought about retract moves and made my own ones. I would take the time and draw my back away angle from the material. I never liked to drag up the material or on the material for the back off move when I was plunge milling. I always tried to go down and back away. If in doubt I would then draw a perpendicular line to the tangent interction of the surface where the plunge milling was going to contact. Yes if I was coming down a profile I would pick my step and then offset the surface the amount of center line of my plunge mill plus amount of stock being left and then from the plunge cutting view project my 3d path unto that surface. Again drawing my angle move away from the surface. Yes a lot of work, but back then Mastercam did not have effective back off moves. I have done 12" deep plunge milling toolpaths in 300M with 4" dia Plunge mills.

 

Colin using what you described does it allow angle off with the back off move as to not drag the floor as well while keeping it tangent to the surface just cut for the best possibility of tool clearance? Does it allow check surfaces for the retract to avoid possible problems in closed or tight areas?

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There is another way of creating a plunge toolpath by using the legacy RULED toolpath found under: TOOLPATHS, WIREFRAME, RULED.

 

There are all kinds of things that can be done with the ruled toolpaths. You can have pullaway moves, tapered (draft) walls, plunge following a contour, and more. Most of which can be accomplished with easy and minimal geometry creation.

 

I put a ZIP file on the FTP under training called PLUNGE EXAMPLE.ZIP that has a PDF tutorial, an example file, and a sample post that will output feed moves instead of rapid moves based upon the feedrate that you enter into misc real number 4. The tutorial also has instructions on how to modify an existing post to add the feed retract logic.

 

The advantage of the post modification is that you can enter the feedrate value that you want to use for retract for each operation. If you leave it at zero, it will output a rapid retract.

 

The post modification also works for drill cycles but you have to change the control definition to output longhand drill cycles. (It is all described in the tutorial)

 

This is one of the topics that I cover in my Sandvik classes on how to leverage Mastercam for better tool utilization.

 

I welcome comments.

 

Enjoy!

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Well one advantage to the way I did it was I made Solids of my forgings before machining and during machining and yes I would take the time to reverse engineering the forgings. As the parts when through the operations they have a solid of how they would come off the machine. That was then used for the next op and so forth and so forth. Great thing about this approach was all the solid used for Solid Layout always matched what was going on in the shop. I have jobs I programmed years ago running in some places still today with new people that I never worked with but are stilling running with no problem because of all the time I put into the details.

 

Think of the current stock model, but in solids and moved from machine group to machine group. The part would go into a 3 axis mill to start, then a CNC lathe, then a 4th axis mill, then a CNC lathe, then CNC mill, then over to the Integrex. All solids for all operations were spot on as they were in each one of the states they were through that part fo the production cycle.

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