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contour mill operation
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David_Lelen01
- Posts: 452
- Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:18 pm
- Location: South Carolina, USA
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contour mill operation
How is the best way to mill a outside contour part from a rectangular block? I started with contour operation, but it does not seem to take into account the stock material size, it just runs a path around the contour. Stock size is 9"Lx5"Wx2"T. Finished size is the dxf contour.
Re: contour mill operation
Can you draw a box around your part the size of the material? Then your SheetCam part would actually represent the area inside the box but outside of your actual part.
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David_Lelen01
- Posts: 452
- Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:18 pm
- Location: South Carolina, USA
- Contact:
Re: contour mill operation
Yes I can draw a box the size of the stock. So then I would need to use a pocket operation? How would I set the leading to feed in tangent to the corner instead of plunging into the stock or ramping into the stock?
Re: contour mill operation
I'm not familiar with milling with SheetCam. Maybe you could draw the box with the edge where you will be starting wider by the width of the bit. Then it will lower beside the material and feed in from the edge. It will also probably mill the rest of that area running off of the material. I'm not sure if that matters.
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Brian Lamb
- Posts: 25
- Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2018 11:04 pm
Re: contour mill operation
Sheetcam doesn't handle this well, doesn't know where the stock is and do any sort of logical reducing from stock size to finished part profile. I tackle this in a couple ways... first and easiest, but wastes some time cutting air is to add roughing passes on the contour operation, say you do the first one leaving 1" of stock, the second at .900, third and .800 and so on until you get to finish size. Works best when your stock is pretty even all around the part.
Second option and more difficult is to add lines in your DXF file across the areas with heavy stock and make roughing operations. Say diagonals on the lower right and left corners, maybe a bunch of parallel lines across the top, stepping shorts on the left side as you get closer to the middle. Then maybe one or two true contour operations around the final shape to finish it up.
Kind of depends if you are doing one part, the first way is easiest and therefore quickest. If you are making a bunch, it's better to break things up and rough out more efficiently. Drawing a box around the whole part and doing a pocket operation isn't so good, it'll send the end mill diving into the part where you usually don't want it... although I have done that, figured out the points in the code where it dives in Z and pre-drilled holes so the end mill doesn't crash.
Just some options for you.
Second option and more difficult is to add lines in your DXF file across the areas with heavy stock and make roughing operations. Say diagonals on the lower right and left corners, maybe a bunch of parallel lines across the top, stepping shorts on the left side as you get closer to the middle. Then maybe one or two true contour operations around the final shape to finish it up.
Kind of depends if you are doing one part, the first way is easiest and therefore quickest. If you are making a bunch, it's better to break things up and rough out more efficiently. Drawing a box around the whole part and doing a pocket operation isn't so good, it'll send the end mill diving into the part where you usually don't want it... although I have done that, figured out the points in the code where it dives in Z and pre-drilled holes so the end mill doesn't crash.
Just some options for you.