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here are the 3 curves for anyone who wants to give it a go. I was unable to get anything with the coons option as well. The cures are tiny. (we do micro molding here!)
3 curve surface.mcam
Just to respond to the question why not go left to right, or across the face as opposed to up and down? When you go across wall that has draft on it, with a sharp endmill the result will be a finish that will resemble a stair case. When using a sharp endmill on a drafted wall and going up and down the finish will be smooth as a babies butt! You will be using the radius of your endmill as opposed to a sharp corner . It also just happens that this drafted wall had a sharp corner at the bottom or i would have used a bull mill or , say a 1/8 e/m with .03 corner rad. The easy thing would of been to use a taper cutter but this wall has odd ball draft.
I noticed when using scallop that it REALLLLLLLY tightens up around the radius! and then makes more of a step in the flat wall. Think i will stick with scallop!
Thanks
I have often noticed that when using flowline and specifying a step over, say of .002 that it will increase dramatically around a radius. I am machining a tapered wall (up and down motion in the Z axis) that wraps into a radius just now and wonder if there is a way to get a consistent stepover thru both?
not sure what i am missing on this but I often did this kind of shape with flowline ( have to uncheck gouge check!) and had good results. See screen shot.
So Aaron, just to be clear I was actually just using a contour path when i got this to work. Makes 1 pass across lifts to clearance and repeats until depth is reached. Than it steps over and repeats until it gets to the final cut. I know what he was saying is a problem with having that thin web at the bottom if your not going to full depth before stepping over! It can damage a cutter and make quite a rucus in process!
So i was just messing around here with a similar situation , and finishing to the final depth before stepping over and i got it to work fine by using (inside of depth of cuts) toggle on "By contour" and it will accomplish what he wanted at the beginning of this thread?
Unable to post it actually ... it is pretty huge file anyways. I was actually surprised it wanted to regenerate the path when other toolpath strategies don't seem to ask? what is taking so long is likely having to use .019 endmill in along .002 wide channels. The cavity depth is only .034 but has tons of tiny rib details.
Just used optirest for the first time in V 2023. The path took soooooooo long to generate? About 45 minutes. Than upon starting my posting i suddenly remember, my collant is not turned on. No problem, go back into the path turn coolant on exit. What? It wants to sit and regenerate the path because of the coolant being off? Something really screwy about that. I just bailed,(thankfully i had just saved the part) and reopen and post with out coolant to edit after wards. Now i am posting, and its been about 15 minutes posting ...... looks like about half way through the posting. Yeah, i know i can batch post or whatever but they want this path in an hour. Okay, done venting!
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