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Taking too long to generate a 3D toolpath.


Waiyar Aung
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  • 1 year later...
On ‎10‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 10:22 AM, JParis said:

As I do the math a .01mm step over is .0003" to me, that seems excessively tight..that in and of itself could cause a long calculation, depending on how big the total cut is...

What size ballmill is being used?

THIS.  I chuckled when I saw the .01 mm because that is such a small stepover.  I was on here looking to see if there is a way to stop a toolpath from generating and just start editing it.  Sometimes when I copy one toolpath to another it will change the stepdown from 100% to 10% and make the generation take 10 times as long and also be a complete waste of time since I have to generate back at 100%.   

 

One trick I use is to do a really heavy stepover when I want to see a toolpath and generate that, and then if I like where it is cutting, i'll regenerate it with the stepover I want. 

I would suggest using .002 to .003 for finishing stepovers when using a ball em.  Typically that leaves a nice finish when doing raster or scallop. 

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18 minutes ago, deejflat said:

One trick I use is to do a really heavy stepover when I want to see a toolpath and generate that, and then if I like where it is cutting, i'll regenerate it with the stepover I want. 

I would suggest using .002 to .003 for finishing stepovers when using a ball em.  Typically that leaves a nice finish when doing raster or scallop. 

Yup

I never try to nail down a tricky 3D path on the first shot...I will open it up to a heavy cut scallop height for the ballmill size and see that my motion is good...then dial it in to what I want

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6 minutes ago, JParis said:

Yup

I never try to nail down a tricky 3D path on the first shot...I will open it up to a heavy cut scallop height for the ballmill size and see that my motion is good...then dial it in to what I want

I always, always, always do this.

Especially on 5-Axis paths.

A great example is the Demo Blade I posted in the Off-Topic Forum.

To generate that finish path, I'm using a Cut Tolerance of 0.0001mm, stepover of 0.08mm, and two different collision control strategies, both at 0.0001mm Tolerance.

To test the motion, prior to generating the final finish, I will modify the Cut Tolerance to 0.01mm, and disable the Collision Control completely, just so I can check and see if the motion is good. I'll set the stepover temporarily to something like 0.5 mm, just to see how the motion looks. I can then mess around quickly with my small/large gap linking settings, adjust approach/retract heights, and tweak my Tool Axis Control strategy, all without waiting an hour for the path to regenerate.

Once I've got the cut motion, and linking motion setup the way I like it, I tighten the tolerance up, then hit regenerate, and go do something else until the paths finish generating.

 

 

 

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For "old school" paths, that are still single threaded, you can try hitting the "ESC" key, once-and-only-once, and just waiting to see if that kills the process. I've had luck in the past with killing Blend and Flowline paths (mostly for undercutting), that were taking forever to regenerate.

Don't go smashing the ESC key multiple times, as you're likely to crash the system that way...

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On 11/10/2020 at 1:40 PM, Colin Gilchrist said:

I always, always, always do this.

Especially on 5-Axis paths.

A great example is the Demo Blade I posted in the Off-Topic Forum.

To generate that finish path, I'm using a Cut Tolerance of 0.0001mm, stepover of 0.08mm, and two different collision control strategies, both at 0.0001mm Tolerance.

To test the motion, prior to generating the final finish, I will modify the Cut Tolerance to 0.01mm, and disable the Collision Control completely, just so I can check and see if the motion is good. I'll set the stepover temporarily to something like 0.5 mm, just to see how the motion looks. I can then mess around quickly with my small/large gap linking settings, adjust approach/retract heights, and tweak my Tool Axis Control strategy, all without waiting an hour for the path to regenerate.

Once I've got the cut motion, and linking motion setup the way I like it, I tighten the tolerance up, then hit regenerate, and go do something else until the paths finish generating.

 

 

 

This is all excellent practice and is the way we teach it- building a multiaxis path in a logical order that doesn't handicap you with regen times and that you can understand and follow what the options are doing. Things like setting cut method to one way or zigzag during the experimentation phase, even if the final path is to use spiral, will allow you to iterate much more quickly on a path.

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