plunge roughing

[LucasGC]

Hello, I am trying to get a plunge roughing toolpath to follow a contour .nci chain and it does most of the stepovers at the correct distance, but it messes up around the curves. Does anyone have a quick solution to this? Thanks

[JoshC]

There is a checkbox on that toolpath called "allow Small Steps" That i think you will need to use, should be found on the Rough Plunge Parameters page below where you set the stepover.

[LucasGC]

I did try that, it's nice in some areas but puts a lot of small cuts in areas i don't need them.

I got close to what I need by playing with tolerances and then added one path in the toolpath editor

even with the small steps box checked i get stepovers bigger than my maximum

[LucasGC]

Found the problem, had been selecting the bottom of the part as the floor surface instead of creating a surface that extends past the bottom of the part. 

[Colin Gilchrist]

Yeah, for Plunge Milling paths, the surfaces need to extend out past the radius of the cutter. I usually go 60-65%, in case the stock varies a little. Better to have 1 row of plunge passes take little, to no material, vs. a pass that exceeds your max cutting width...

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Have they fixed it to pull away from the wall before retracting yet?

[mkd]

On 5/30/2018 at 12:51 PM, LucasGC said:

Does anyone have a quick solution to this? Thanks

yep. use a different CAM software. plunging in MC blows

[neurosis]

On 5/31/2018 at 5:53 PM, mkd said:

yep. use a different CAM software. plunging in MC blows

I had to laugh at that.    I wont mention names on the forum, but i've used software that was a lot better at plunge roughing back in the mid 2000's. I don't think that it caught on so why put time and money in to developing it?   I did see a small shop roughing giant forged aluminum blocks using plunge roughing on a small vertical 40 taper haas and im not sure that they would have been able to rough them out more efficiently any other way.   It was fun to watch. 

[mkd]

18 hours ago, Neurosis said:

on a small vertical 40 taper haas and im not sure that they would have been able to rough them out more efficiently any other way.   It was fun to watch. 

I've had some wild success with *other* materials around 2001 with plunging. I'd bet MC would work reasonably well in aluminum with it's random-drill-anywhere placement, being pretty automated.