roughing not working

briank · Post by **briank** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 2:41 pm

I have a part that I am trying to generate a horizontal roughing path for. For some reason it is running the tool above the part and it never touches the stock. On the same part I can do a horizontal finishing and it works fine. Any clues where to look? I have been comparing the parameters of both operations and I can't seem to find what is different between the two.

Post by **MecSoft Support** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 6:59 pm

Make sure your stock model is built correctly. This is the only thing that is different from the Horizontal Finishing and Roughing toolpath methods.

briank · Post by **briank** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 7:15 pm

Not sure that I understand.

How is the stock any different between the roughing and finishing? I made one piece of stock that is used for both.

I have attached the drawing.

Mitch Heynick · Post by **Mitch Heynick** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 1:36 am

Does look odd. Looks like what is causing part of it is the stock setting in the MOp. If you set it about 0.1, it seems to be fine, progressively making that value bigger starts to generate these additional paths above the model... Why, I do not know. --Mitch

Post by **MecSoft Support** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:48 pm

Hi,
It is the stock value of 0.6 that is causing the problem. The stock amount is too large for the size of your part. This basically results in no areas to be machined. If you reduce the size of the stock to say 0.1 you will see that the cutter is able to get into the cavities to generate the cuts

The cuts about the top of the stock however are curious. I have sent this to development for them to take a look.

briank · Post by **briank** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 1:58 pm

Ah ha. Now I see. This is the first time I have used roughing. So I take it that the stock value is the amount of stock that you want to leave on the part. Those weird cuts above the part disappear when I set the stock value correctly.

I take it that a value of .1 gives me .1" of material left even in the vertical axis? How would I set things if I wanted to leave .1 horizontally, but I wanted to leave only .020" vertical?

This forum is great. I wish the documentation and the help files were as good.

Post by **MecSoft Support** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 3:30 pm

Yes the stock value is the amount of uniform stock you want to leave on the part. This is uniform in ALL directions. You cannot specify a stock value in the vertical direction and a separate stock value in the horizontal direction. Mathematically this is ambiguous since there is no definition on the stock in the non-vertical and the non-horizontal areas.