Hello everyone First of all, THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your quick replies, I appreciate that really very much, absolutely great!! You guys were right, it was the "Check your stock to leave on floors and walls settings in the Model Geometry section" thing. There was 1mm on both, floors and walls. Thad: THX for the tipp with the Blend toolpath, I will try that out. I think I have come back to you guys with other issues. Winy Wohlwend

Yes, check the stock to leave amount. In this classic surface toolpath, the drive stock to leave is found on the second tab page. Also, check the tool tip/center option also found on the second tab page. Maybe it is set to “center”.

Good video, John!

Also, check to see if you're programming to "center" or "tip" of the tool. (Sorry, but I'm not sure what parameter page that's on.) Center will show an offset toolpath like you're seeing because it's showing you the path of the center of the ball...which is up a bit off of the fretboard. Another comment that I wanted to make is that since your surface doesn't have much shape to it (fretboard is only slightly arced), you could probably rough it with a finish parallel toolpath. As a newbie, you're probably thinking "I'm roughing, so I should use a roughing toolpath." The difference between the roughing parallel toolpath and the finishing parallel toolpath is that the roughing allows for step downs; assuming you've got a generous amount of stock to remove. In this particular case, you don't have much stock to remove so there's absolutely nothing wrong with roughing with a finish parallel toolpath leaving some finish stock, then using finish parallel again leaving 0 stock. My last comment is that in this particular case, since the form is as shallow as it is, finish parallel should work just fine. Generally speaking, I recommend using the Blend toolpath for finishing. It does a better job of stepover on a wider variety of surfaces. You can see the difference between the two toolpaths with the right examples, but I'm not in the position to offer those examples to you. Perhaps someone else here is. ***EDIT*** I just realized that billb mentioned the tip/center setting earlier.

Funny thing about this feature... For years and years, it always used to function like this: Select ops, left click and drag and the ops that you dragged would automatically be MOVED AFTER the op you released on. Select ops, RIGHT click and drag and when you released, you'd get the option to move/copy the ops before/after the op you released on. So like you, I've always wanted to move the ops after the op I released on. And I knew exactly how to do it quickly. Then, one day it was mentioned here, that the functionality that we were all used to was actually a bug. They fixed it and now it's a nuisance. Now that it's fixed, we have the functionality that you're questioning. And I agree, I don't like it either.

I can't believe how easy you made that look. I've been struggling with this since last night. I tried to redraw it many time but I was leaving out the culprit that was causing the problem. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Disregard my response. Rekd’s answer is correct - see stock on floors and walls in Model Geometry. Those may default to a nonzero amount.

Check your stock to leave on floors and walls settings in the Model Geometry section (where you select your geometry initially).

most of these titan of cnc parts have videos on how to make them in CAD, and even a video on how to then toolpath them in cam. titans team did a good job with these videos and even made them free https://academy.titansofcnc.com/category/mill-building-blocks i would suggest you review those to get familiar with some solid modeling processes, and once you get your feet wet maybe branch out into some caminstructor training or perhaps training with a local reseller. but many online free resources like this are available if your willing to watch some videos. Just remember there is always more than one way to do just about anything, so keeping an open mind is always best!

Hey Thad. Yes, we have some old PC's for that purpose. We're still hoping to find an old one with the Windows for workgroups 3.11 ... remember those We even have the 1985 General Numeric "FANUC SYSTEM P-MODEL G" programming station, but are missing discs.... And yes, we have a lot of customers going thru our showroom so that will definitely be cool to show. <cheers>

I would thread mill that. In my experience the odds of tapping 61 NPT holes in 304 SS successfully are near zero Carmex thread mill wizard