Create a 3-axis flat toolpath

00:02

Create a three axis flat tool path.

00:06

After completing this video,

00:07

you'll be able to use flat and create a tool path to identify flat areas

00:13

Infusion 3 60.

00:14

Let's carry on with our three axis sample

00:17

at this point we've essentially got two operations.

00:20

We have a three D.

00:21

Adaptive to remove the majority of our stock and then we

00:24

have a three D parallel that's done a lot of finishing.

00:28

There are a couple of other tool paths that

00:30

we do want to explore and on this side there's

00:32

one more that we want to take a look at but first let's remember that inside of three D.

00:36

Adaptive, we had a flat area detection option because we left stock behind.

00:42

It was not able to finish off the flat areas of our part.

00:45

However,

00:46

it did go into those flat areas and identify them such as this bottom section.

00:52

Inside of our drop down for our three D. Tools.

00:54

There are two main tools that can be used for flat area detection.

00:58

There's a flat tool path and there's a horizontal tool path.

01:02

There are a couple of differences between these but in

01:04

this example we're going to explore the flat tool path.

01:07

This has a couple of extra options such as

01:09

using a pocket or parallel strategy inside of it.

01:13

When we select flat, the first thing we need to do,

01:16

just like any other tool path is select the appropriate tool for this.

01:19

We're going to be using a quarter inch flat end mill and selecting

01:23

next we're going to move on to our geometry

01:26

and for this we're not gonna make any selection.

01:28

Our machining boundary by default is none and I'm going

01:31

to leave that turned off in the passes section,

01:35

we're going to take a look at some of the options.

01:37

We have, our passes look slightly different for this flat tool path.

01:41

The main option I want to focus on is the type allowing

01:44

us to use a pocketing finishing strategy or a parallel finishing strategy.

01:49

The pocket strategy is going to be the most efficient

01:52

for our geometry because it's going to come into this

01:54

pocket area and allow us to create a two D

01:56

contour along the edge and finish off the floor.

02:00

The step over amount right now is .25, which is the entire diameter of our tool.

02:05

It's probably a bit much. So I'm going to change this 2.125,

02:10

there's also some smoothing deviation options and for

02:13

our case because we have straight edges,

02:15

it's really not going to make too much of a difference,

02:18

we're going to leave the profile, cut direction on climb,

02:21

and we're going to add a finishing pass.

02:23

There is a finishing step over amount and this is generally used for finishing walls

02:29

at this point, let's say, okay,

02:30

and allow it to generate the tool path and see where it's cutting.

02:34

I'm going to use F- 7 to bring back our tool path

02:36

preview and we can see that it's cutting this top section,

02:40

this top section here as well as this bottom area.

02:44

When we take a look at this tool path,

02:45

this looks like an efficient means to finishing off these flat areas and these walls

02:50

and it's something we could omit from previous tool paths such as our parallel.

02:54

But let's go back into our flat and let's take another look

02:58

in our geometry section.

02:59

We can also use avoid touch surfaces and allow it

03:02

to avoid or select specific areas to work on.

03:06

We do also have a rest machining option which will

03:10

take a look at material that's used from previous operations.

03:13

If we say okay,

03:14

it's going to take a look at material that's already been removed

03:17

and determine whether or not it means to machine certain areas,

03:21

it's taking a little bit longer to calculate.

03:23

But because we already did our parallel strategy to finish these top faces,

03:27

you can see that it does avoid finishing those.

03:30

However,

03:31

because we are going to be flipping this part over and resting it on parallels.

03:35

I want to use this flat strategy to finish off those areas.

03:39

So I am going to right click and edit this tool

03:41

path again and this time I'm going to disable rest machining,

03:45

we're going to say okay and allow it to regenerate those tool paths.

03:50

Next I'm going to go back into my parallel strategy

03:53

and under my geometry under avoid touch surfaces,

03:57

I'm going to avoid these top two faces and I'm going

04:00

to allow my flat strategy to finish those off specifically.

04:04

We can now see that the ball mill is stopping short of that edge.

04:08

We do allow it to contact the boundary with the center of the tool but

04:12

it is not going to be machining those top faces then are flat tool path,

04:16

comes back and does a finishing pass on those

04:19

for this specific part.

04:20

Remember that we are using one by two stock and we're not cutting below the top

04:24

so we ultimately will have the same geometry

04:27

that we had with the initial rough stock.

04:30

But keep in mind that for this part that's not

04:32

really a concern or consideration that we need to make.

04:36

The main thing that we want to do is we want to

04:37

identify tool paths and their uses for different types of geometry.

04:42

At this point the three D.

04:43

Adaptive removed the majority of the material and we used a couple of three D

04:48

contour tool paths to explore whether or not they were viable for this part.

04:52

Ultimately,

04:53

we used a parallel strategy moving along the X direction and

04:57

then a flat strategy to finish off those flat areas.

05:01

At this point,

05:01

let's make sure that we do activate to go back to our named view

05:05

and let's go ahead and save the design before moving on to the next step