Do you find you're able to get close to the MRR of high-feed mills, with solid carbide? My feed mill toolpaths have always had a much higher MRR than my solid carbide toolpaths, but that could very well be because I'm just not pushing those endmills hard enough.

No problem. I'm having a little bit of difficulty understanding the process. Or perhaps just understanding the purpose, or intention of the process. Is the purpose to prevent an endmill with, say 50mm flute length, from taking cuts where it only engages say, 5mm of the flute, or whatever the step up is set to? And using the feed mill, (which is meant to take smaller DOC) to machine those step-ups?

Ron, do you have an example of the process Colin described that you could upload?

Just a little update on this in case anyone else is in a similar situation. I ended up running a .492" drill through the slot. 5 holes, spaced evenly (the drill was already in the machine for another part) After that I created a dynamic toolpath using the pre-drilled holes as air regions, although I made the actual air regions .472" diameter, to avoid any small slivers on such a long ratio tool. 500SFM/.004ipt, 10% stepover, .450"doc and it sounds great. Thanks for your suggestions

When I create an optirough, and I'm setting the steep/shallow I'll usually just use the right click menu, and "z coordinate of point" Then I'll choose my lowest point, and my highest point that I want the opti path to cut. Usually it'll end up being some odd number. 1.346325 etc. Is that how I should be using the steep/shallow settings? I'm sure I'm not using the opti toolpaths QUITE right, as I usually end up spending enough time tweaking them, that I probably could have just made multiple dynamic toolpaths in a shorter timeframe

Mikron has some similar endmills without the fancy sleeve on the end. The coolant pattern is great, and they work REALLY well. Interesting seeing DIXI. We have a huge 800mm DIXI HMC.

I am machining my part with an optirest toolpath, and for some reason it's leaving .05" stock, even though I have faces selected, with .010" in the floor and wall stock allowance areas. Any idea what could be causing it to leave more stock?

2022

I have a file with a large number of operations and somehow my solid got moved .050" in the z direction. I'm not sure how, or when. As far back as I look in my backups, the solid is in the wrong place. Not the end of the world, but definitely a waste of time, and something that makes me lose a little confidence in my program. My question, is in the future, to prevent this, is there a way to lock the solid in place to prevent it from being moved or modified?

From what I've heard, I think your feet are doing well in any of those boots. I tried Redwings once, because of the number of people that claim they're the best, and they may have been the least comfortable boots I've owned. I also have goofy feet, lol.

Well, hell, I'm gonna make this about boots! Georgia Boot Giant, and Wolverine Raider Durashock Carbonmax (whew, that was a mouthful) are the best 2 pairs of boots I've ever owned. Oh, and Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! I second the huge thanks throughout the year from all the guys here!!

Interesting. I will check them out next time I have a need. I've been using some Garr VX-7 tools in titanium, invar, and heat treated stainless. The coating they have on those tools is pretty amazing. Blew every other tool I tried out of the water as far as tool life goes.

In aluminum, I used a lot of the helical tools with the small chipbreakers. I always thought the more "serrated", older style roughers like you linked, weren't as well suited for HSM toolpaths. Is that not the case?

Ron, the machine I work on most often, does have high pressure, through spindle coolant (1200psi) and most of my tool run in Lyndex SK collets, and I almost always run HP coolant through the collet. Except of course when the cutting tool is equipped with coolant holes, then I'll use a sealed collet, or other appropriate method.

Colin, I've been trying to learn more about where/when/how to push a tool to get better cycle time, or more tool life. Is there a good way to tell if you're having a problem with chip packing, BEFORE tool failure? Do you know where I can learn more, regarding how to determine which parameters to push, things to look for, etc?

I too, use a light grey background. I've also found that it's easier for my eyes to read the Century Gothic font.

Not to derail the thread, but what do you suggest for training if your reseller is....less than capable? I'm totally self taught and I think I could benefit from real training. However, we've done some training with our reseller and it did not go very well at all. It was definitely not worth the $$

That's sort of what I did. I used a point toolpath. but then I posted and put it into a manual entry, then used a variable so that the operator has somewhere to enter the new tool length when they need to change the drill. Then used that variable for the positioning in the g-code...like so.... G01 Y[-1.7015-#700]F1.2 G00 Y[-1.8315-#700] G01 Y[-1.6715-#700] G00 Y[-1.8315-#700] G01 Y[-1.6415-#700] G00 Y[-1.8315-#700] G01 Y[-1.6115-#700] G00 Y[-1.8315-#700] G01 Y[-1.5815-#700] G00 Y[-1.8315-#700], Wouldn't work as well for a more complex toolpath, but for this, it works.

I am using a slightly modified version of the MPMaster post. Just drilling some holes. Nothing too crazy. The right angle head is only being used with the drill pointing in the Y+ direction. I did try building an aggregate head, but I'm not sure if I did it correctly, because I get the achievable toolplane error when I try to post. Nobody's hair needs to be set on fire at the moment, but I just thought it would be a good option to have in the future, since we have the head already.

I have a right angle head in an HMC. I've only ever used it via hand-coding. How difficult is it to get working properly in Mastercam? I followed a video I found on youtube, but I didn't have a lot of luck. Reseller says I would have to use a router post, is that correct?

Great, Thank you. I would imagine M makes even more sense with the minimum distance style of linking. I've been outputting mine as a high feedrate with good results.

James, did you get a chance to ask about P vs M for dynamic toolpaths? I've tried both, and they seem to do the job either way, just curious what the guys at Matsuura say.

That's basically what I do, so if nothing else, it's reassuring to see that my solution is the same as others.

Haha, I'm trying hard to follow in their footsteps!! I'm very far from a software developer, so I'm sure there's plenty of reasons against it.

Something about your explanation made me think, what about some sort of a slider, or a percentage, where you can choose to prioritize staying in-cut vs the echo shape, this way, I would think it would still be the end user making the determination, rather than the software. I think this topic has brought out almost all the eMC "big dogs"!! Only missing a couple!!