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Pocketing with flat cutter in V-Carving

Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 10:28 am
by MecSoft Support
User request:
I would like to have the ability to V carve with flat bottomed pockets, as well as clear a flat area around the outside of V carvings without resorting to offset regions in order to avoid cutting the sloped areas with a flat mill.

Solution:
There is a trick you can employ here to get around having to pocket the area left behind by the V-curve cutter. Create a taper tool of the same side angle but with a flat bottom of the straight cutter you want to employ for pocketing. Generate the toolpath. Then when you post the toolpath use the straight flat bottom cutter instead of the taper flat bottom cutter. And everything should work out just right!

The nice part about this is that the simulation will also look correct when you are simulating the cutting inside VisualMill/RhinoCAM.

Pocketing with flat cutter in V-Carving

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 4:10 pm
by tsalaf
I tried this approach with a tool bottom diameter of .060” in order to get into the narrow valleys left by the V tool. This doesn’t machine the valleys and requires regions to be drawn after observing the cut simulation in order to get into the left over areas. It also requires a region to be drawn that is larger than the part by the radius of the V tool, in order to pocket to the edge of the part.

Steve