Surface High Speed Roughing Corner Rounding

[Justin Beebe at Folsom Tool]

Does anyone have a standard they like to use for corner rounding when using surface high speed toolpaths for roughing? What do you guys like to use for max radius, profile tolerance, and offset tolerance and why. I'm using Surface High Speed (Rest Roughing) to rough aluminum with a 1/2 carbide Diamondback rougher. The tool has a .03 corner radius.

 

Thanks in advance,

[sweinberg]

Far from an expert, but I'll throw my 2 cents in:

 

It'll probably depend a lot on how fast you're running and your machine, specifically how tight a tolerance to specific arcs your machine can hold at the speed you're running. If you are running in the 'safe zone' where your machine can hold your arc tightly, you can probably leave a very small offset, if any.

 

There are tests you can run to determine your machine tolerances, but I haven't done any. My machine gets pretty sucky at really tight turns, even though I run it relatively slowly. So I tend to leave about .001 on the walls (the floor tends to be fine - but I only do 2D milling, so can't speak for 3D), and just go to the tightest diameter (I believe it's 2.5%), then clean up the finish in another pass.

[Justin Beebe at Folsom Tool]

Thanks sweinberg I'll keep that in mind. When I was a member on Streaming Teacher they had a good video explaining all the settings. I just can't remember what it said for corner rounding.

[Roger Peterson]

max radius and profile tolerance only apply to the pass closest to the geometry. they also only apply to internal corners (you won't gouge your part on an external sharp corner)

 

offset tolerance applies to all other passes.

 

as stated how you use them depends on the machine and what your goals are for the toolpath, do you want it to remove all the material it can, or do you want it to run smooth and remove "most" of the material it can.

 

some generic values that I used as starting points before opti-rest

max radius = 10% of cutter dia

profile tol = 5%

offset tol = 10%

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but really just use opti-rest you will be much happier with the results.