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fusion 360 controlling floor toll path

garychipmaker

Cast Iron
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Location
ia
Hi I'm new to Cad/Cam so bear with me. Is there a way to machine a part such as a 1" square with a .25" square .500" tall on top so that the tool path goes around the part climb milling in straight line moves working it's way to the .25" square walls using a 1/4" endmill with small stepovers. I'm looking for the pattern on the floor instead of fast machining times. Like a series of square patterns on the surface instead of addaptive move patterns.
 
John Saunders (NYCCNC) did a youtube video on alternatives to face milling with various tool paths using smaller end mills to create patterns like you describe. It was pretty recently.
 
No its a male square with a .250" square on top. I'll look for the NYCNC video I'm have trouble figuring 360 out with just the Youtube videos and just fumbling around trying to learn it. I printed out one of my posts and it used 513 lines to machine the 1" square with a square on top I threw away the beginning part of the program but here is a portion it. I don't know why it made all these small moves on and on after the contour profiling.
N416 X-0.3272 Y0.2692
N417 X-0.3243 Y0.2742
N418 X-0.3187 Y0.283
N419 X-0.312 Y0.2919 and on and on till line 496
 
Once you get it doing what you want it to do you can turn on smoothing and it will probably smooth all of that out. I would try a 2D Contour around the .25 square and add additional passes with the step over you want.
 
Not sure about fusion, but with mastercam you can choose the toolpath behaviour on pockets. Such as parallel spiral, constant overlap spiral, zigzag, etc. This would change what the cut pattern looks like on the floor. Don't think you will get that control with a contour toolpath, unless you drew some lines (like a spiral) and programmed the tool to cut on centerline of those lines..??
 
The dimensions are obviously wrong in this example but I think this is what was described, and how I would do it.

Screenshot 2019-10-17 at 13.34.45.jpg

Use the outside of the boss as the contour driving the operation. Then add roughing passes in the passes tab ( I turned on stock contours in the geometry tab to trim it to just the necessary cutting moves for the stock ) and play around with the smoothing, stepover and the outer corner mode in the passes tab to change the pattern you'll get.

Screenshot 2019-10-17 at 13.36.34.jpgScreenshot 2019-10-17 at 13.45.24.jpgScreenshot 2019-10-17 at 13.40.54.jpg

Then play around with smoothing to minimise the number of small linear moves.
Screenshot 2019-10-17 at 13.55.18.png

Adaptive clearing will always have loads of small moves and not be very readable but I've read that can be good for some high end controls and lets it do the smoothing rather than the software ( it shook the minimill, without HSM, to the point the sheet metal sang sometime though )
 
Another method is to create a sketch with the tool path you want it to take, should be easy since you just want straight lines that can be snapped to the grid. Then use the "Trace" CAM function to generate the tool path, selecting your sketch.

I did something similar when I needed a spiral, creating the spiral in Inkskape and saving as a SVG, then importing to Fusion and tracing. Worked well after some tweaking.
 
Yes there is a way to ge what you want.
use a 2D contour and set your stepover and how many times you need it to move in.

so .375/xxx = the number of steps

you can also tell it to not round the corners so you get 90 degree turns
 








 
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