Best toolpath for the job

[Rocketmachinist]

What is your guys go to toolpath to put a simple radius of the outside of a part. I seem to struggle with this all the time. I found flowline to work fairly well but it doesn't like the little fillets in between the flats.

 

 

 

[jeff]

Is a corner radius cutter not an option for this part?

When flowline doesn't work for me, I usually have decent results with Surface Finish Contour.

[Guest]

2D Swept if you can't use a rad cutter

 

Bigger question is on what kind of machine...3 - 4 - 5axis

[Rocketmachinist]

Haas SL-20

[Colin Gilchrist]

Surface Finish Contour, or Surface High Speed - Waterline...

[Rocketmachinist]

The part looks like a little cocktail umbrella on the other side. So it can't use a radius cutter on that side. It's only a .009 radius that gets blended from the bottom to the top.

[Rocketmachinist]

Surface Finish Contour, or Surface High Speed - Waterline...

The waterline was doing weird stuff for me. It was touching the small corners just fine but the large flats it looked like it only started 5 passes lower in the z than the other sections.

[Reko]

Waterline for me.... I hate using old school toolpaths if I can help it... although flowline for simple surfaces works great.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Try using the Depths option to force the passes where you need them (use Absolute, and play with the numbers). I'd make sure your Gap Size is bumped up to something large (.500 for example), and that the "motion < gap size" set to "follow surfaces".

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Flowline often works best if you recreate fresh surfaces with the UV lines all in the same direction.  You may also get good results with a Wireframe path.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Surface Finish Blend is my choice when you want "Flowline" style motion, across multiple surfaces.

[jlw™]

I was gonna throw out a blend but Colin beat me to it.

[kunfuzed]

Flowline.  The key to using flowline on a fillet around a square, or any other perimeter is you cant have any sharp corners where the radii meet.  Adjust the perimeter Fillet so it is a little smaller than the corner Fillets.

 

And stay away from Surface Finish Blend... in my opinion.

 

EDIT: Sorry about the pics... couldn't figure out how to insert them into the post body...

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[Colin Gilchrist]

Flowline.  The key to using flowline on a fillet around a square, or any other perimeter is you cant have any sharp corners where the radii meet.  Adjust the perimeter Fillet so it is a little smaller than the corner Fillets.

 

And stay away from Surface Finish Blend... in my opinion.

 

EDIT: Sorry about the pics... couldn't figure out how to insert them into the post body...

 

 

I think you might not understand how to properly use Surface Finish Blend, if you are making a statement like that. It does require some work to create your Blend Chains, but the effort is worth it in the end. Blend can create a smooth "flowline" style path over an unlimited amount of surfaces, regardless of the U/V curve direction. The path just "works", and creates some amazingly smooth motion across the surfaces/faces, if you take the time to create the proper drive chains.

 

With Blend, you need to create two chains of geometry that represent the "center line" of the cutter path, at the "start and end" positions. You can use the edges of the surfaces, but when using a ball endmill against a wall for example, you need to offset the surface edges by the radius of the cutter for proper path creation. You can even take multiple surface edges, project them to a flat plane, and then use Create > Spline > Curves Spline to "join" the separate curves into a single spline entity.

 

You also do not have the "sharp corner" limitation, since you can create a "Square" chain at the top, and a "filleted" chain on the bottom. (Offset by the radius of the cutter, since this is where the tool transitions to the "wall".

 

You can even blend from a "Point Chain" (single point), to any shaped chain as the "outer" chain shape. This can allow you to "spiral" out or in against any shape of surface or solid face geometry.

[kunfuzed]

I think you might not understand how to properly use Surface Finish Blend, if you are making a statement like that. It does require some work to create your Blend Chains, but the effort is worth it in the end. Blend can create a smooth "flowline" style path over an unlimited amount of surfaces, regardless of the U/V curve direction. The path just "works", and creates some amazingly smooth motion across the surfaces/faces, if you take the time to create the proper drive chains.

 

I will be the first to agree with you there, that I absolutely do not understand how to get SFB to give me as smooth a path as Flowline.  I would also like to add that while my comment was said in jest, I definitely don't want to discourage anyone else reading this post from trying something they haven't before, especially based on my own lack of knowledge or inexperience.

 

I will say the problems I've had with SFB is that I just can't get that "Flow" to work.  Usually the results are jagged, up and down, scrubbing motions, and a lot of code (which is possibly not filtered correctly on my part) which doesn't play well with our non-high speed look ahead Haas controls.  In these situations I've almost always found a way to get Flowline to work, albeit with some painstaking geometry creation... lol

 

You have given me hope though, as I can see the usefulness of just being able to "force" it over multiple surfaces regardless of their inherent vectors.  I will definitely be experimenting with it tomorrow. 

[jlw™]

Once you figure it out... you'll look for places to apply it.

 

Love the response btw, very gracious.  Much respect.

[Colin Gilchrist]

I will be the first to agree with you there, that I absolutely do not understand how to get SFB to give me as smooth a path as Flowline.  I would also like to add that while my comment was said in jest, I definitely don't want to discourage anyone else reading this post from trying something they haven't before, especially based on my own lack of knowledge or inexperience.

 

I will say the problems I've had with SFB is that I just can't get that "Flow" to work.  Usually the results are jagged, up and down, scrubbing motions, and a lot of code (which is possibly not filtered correctly on my part) which doesn't play well with our non-high speed look ahead Haas controls.  In these situations I've almost always found a way to get Flowline to work, albeit with some painstaking geometry creation... lol

 

You have given me hope though, as I can see the usefulness of just being able to "force" it over multiple surfaces regardless of their inherent vectors.  I will definitely be experimenting with it tomorrow. 

 

Can you post a sample file to this thread, or to the FTP site? (Instructions for FTP are in the "Important Topics" Sticky thread).

 

It doesn't have to be an actual part file. Just save the surfaces you want to cut, and I'll throw down some sample tool paths on them as an example.

[kunfuzed]

Here's just a simple block with a perimeter fillet around it.  The Flowline gives me the exact motion that I want, filtered down to where full arcs are swung around the corners.

 

I will admit that in this scenario, I actually got the blend to look pretty darn close, though around the corners, it is still giving me line segments, which on the machines we run here are less than desirable.

 

Maybe I will look later some time for an actual part example I've had trouble with.

 

Thanks!

Blend.mcx-9