Compare spiral, radial, and scallop toolpaths

00:02

In this video, will compare spiral radial and scallop toolpaths.

00:07

After completing this step, you'll be able to,

00:09

you simulate to review a toolpath modify toolpath parameters and explain the differences between spiral radio and scallop toolpaths.

00:19

In fusion 360, we want to carry on with our coupler for CNC Mill design.

00:25

At this point we've created a handful of toolpaths and we're pretty close to being done with the design.

00:30

However, we want to continue to explore different toolpaths to see which ones might work best for our design.

00:37

So far we've taken a look at adaptive clearing and

00:45

but there are a couple other toolpaths that are meant for circular style parts and we want to explore how they'll work on our design.

00:53

In order to do this, we're first going to start with a 3D spiral toolpath.

00:58

When we talk about a 3D spiral toolpath, we're going to use the eighth inch ball in mill for all of these.

01:04

But keeping in mind that an eighth inch tool is a relatively small tool and we have to be careful how hard we're pushing it.

01:10

When we move on to the geometry section. This style of toolpath requires a center point.

01:17

For that, we need to select a circular reference and it's going to grab the center point,

01:22

then it's going to automatically use a silhouette as the machining boundary.

01:27

One thing that we want to do is we want to avoid certain surfaces,

01:31

we want to keep the tool out of the inside of the part and we don't really need to cut the top face since we've already taken care of it,

01:39

but we want to make it go all the way around the outside of the part, all the way down to this face.

01:45

We can also select faces to avoid, like the tops of our soft jaws, if we want to include those in the calculations.

01:53

From here, we're not going to adjust any of the other settings,

01:56

we're going to leave them as they are default and just see what is generated off of this toolpath.

02:02

We want to make sure that we do turn on the cutting move so we can see what's created.

02:07

When we have a spiral toolpath it starts at a center point and it works its way out in a spiral.

02:13

This makes it really good for different types of circular or revolve designs that don't have a lot of vertical walls.

02:21

When they have vertical walls oftentimes it causes problems,

02:25

because the toolpath itself is not able to capture that vertical wall as its spiraling away from the center point.

02:32

Next we want to talk about a radial toolpath and we want to see what that is generating.

02:38

When we take a look at a radio toolpath. Once again, it wants a center point.

02:43

Once again, we're going to use avoid touch surfaces as we want to keep it out of the center of the part.

02:48

We also want to make sure that it's not going down onto the soft jaws or to the outside of the part.

02:54

Once again I'm not going to make any adjustments to the default settings, I'm just going to simply allow it to generate.

03:00

Now this has a much better result.

03:03

You can see by default, it's working up and down those walls and it's working its way out.

03:09

Obviously within process stock, what we're taking a look at is all of the other toolpaths that have already removed material,

03:15

but we can see from the toolpath traces exactly how this toolpath works.

03:20

If we take a look at its settings and we go into our passes tab.

03:24

You can see that it's starting from the inside but we also have different linking parameters that we can change.

03:32

We can modify its angular step where it's starting and going to and also inner and outer limits.

03:38

For example, if we didn't want it to go past one We could set the value at 1" and that would stop it from going outside a specific point.

03:48

You can see here and now it stops basically at the outside of our champ for.

03:52

So this is a great option for this style of geometry.

03:56

However, it's not likely the most efficient as we can use things like 2D contour in a single pass to finish off certain areas.

04:04

Now that we've taken a look at spiral and radial.

04:07

Let's talk about another 3D toolpath that has a lot of great functionality. And that's going to be our

04:15

Again we're going to use the eighth inch ball in mill.

04:18

Again we're going to use some of the default settings but notice that this no longer has that center point selection instead,

04:25

it's working off the silhouette as the machining boundary.

04:28

I do want to use avoid touch surfaces and make sure that it avoids cutting on the inside of my part.

04:34

I don't want it to go down to the soft jaws and I don't want it to try to cut the outside diameter.

04:39

Let's pull this back into the middle of the part and with all the default settings let's go ahead and say okay.

04:46

So this gives us a little bit of a different result.

04:49

Now it has some benefits, it looks like it does a pretty good job of working its way around the part.

04:55

But obviously there are some drawbacks.

04:58

There is not going to be very many. One size fits all toolpaths.

05:03

There is an option in here called steep and shallow.

05:06

That makes use of scallop passes on the curved areas and it can also make use of parallel passes or contour passes on the flat or vertical areas.

05:17

So the steep and shallow which is inside of the extensions is a great option and would allow us to make use of multiple toolpaths.

05:25

Let's take a look at these three toolpaths by selecting them inside of our up,

05:30

and we want to go to actions and simulate the reason that we want to do this here and we can show the stock.

05:36

It's because we want to follow what the toolpath is doing.

05:39

We might want to reduce the speed and you'll notice that with radial, it's going up and down the part.

05:46

I'm going to jump to the next operation and with scallop you'll note that scallop is going to be working its way around the part.

05:54

If we jump back and we play through these operations.

05:60

We can take a look and we can see that spiral.

06:02

It's gonna miss a lot of that vertical wall but it is doing a pretty good job.

06:07

And with a small enough resolution without this vertical section, it would actually do a pretty good job on this part.

06:14

The radio is going to do a better job on this part simply because it's not going to miss any vertical geometry,

06:20

but it is going to be pushing that tool down and then dragging it back up, we can modify the settings to change whether or not it's going up or down.

06:30

But again, this has certain issues when we get to a vertical wall,

06:34

because we're taking a round tool and then we're contacting that vertical wall and we're dragging it up,

06:40

and then the scallop operation is probably going to be the best because we can focus our attention on certain things.

06:47

For this example, we want to go through and we're going to delete spiral radial and scallop.

06:53

And we're actually going to go back and we're going to delete the 3D ramp.

06:57

We need to create some new toolpaths that allow us to machine the geometry exactly as intended.

07:03

So the first thing that I'm going to do is go to 3D and select a 3D scallop,

07:08

and I want to focus my attention specifically on this upper fill it.

07:12

I can use avoid touch surfaces and I can use the touch option to focus just on that, fill it.

07:19

Notice that there is a boundary overlap that's in here of .0125 and we're allowing the tool to center on the boundary Inside of our passes section.

07:29

Right now, the step over is .0625, which is rather large. I'm going to set that 2.005 and allow it to generate a toolpath.

07:39

You'll notice that it's going down the sides of this wall and it's taking a lot of geometry with it.

07:47

Now, what I want to do here is I want to modify.

07:52

And I want to go back into my geometry section,

07:54

I'm going to select contact point boundary and I'm going to adjust this boundary overlap and I'm going to put it back down to zero,

08:02

when I do that and regenerate notice that it has a small gap in where the fill it ends. But then it's still dropping down here.

08:11

Some other things that we can do with scallop is we can change the boundary settings to a selection.

08:17

We can focus our attention here.

08:20

We're still using avoid touch surfaces but then we can also focus our attention on slopes.

08:25

We don't want to go all the way to the vertical so we can focus on 89 and we can go all the way from zero,

08:31

starting at the top and the horizontal faces.

08:34

When we do that, we're able to just limit the amount that this toolpath is cutting.

08:40

And if we change and hide the cutting moves we can see that we've gotten a pretty good resolution.

08:46

Now let's apply it to this larger face so we use 3D scallop once more.

08:52

Once again our machining boundary is going to be based on the selection and I'm actually going to start at the root of this, fill it.

08:59

And I'm going to use avoid touch surfaces and I want to allow it to machine everything here.

09:05

But once again I'm going to use slope.

09:07

I don't want to go all the way to the vertical and this is going to allow me to focus my attention all the way to their.

09:14

And then this time I want to make sure, that I reduce that boundary overlap again back down to zero.

09:20

And in my past this section, once again I want to use that small step over of .005 and say okay.

09:28

So now when the scallop is generated,

09:31

if we turn our cutting moves back on you can see it's focusing its attention just in this area,

09:36

and we can also bring our pencil toolpath all the way back down and then we can take a look at the results.

09:44

Now that we've added these toolpaths,

09:46

I'm going to go and highlight the two scallops and the pencil and I want to go to simulate and I want to take a look at the operations.

09:54

So it's working its way around, it's cutting that top, fill it,

09:59

it's smoothing everything out and then it's going to come back down and it's going to machine this big tapered section.

10:04

Right now, it's going from top to bottom but we can modify the parameters so that it goes bottom to top.

10:10

And at this point we really don't even need the pencil toolpath because our tool exactly matches that fill it.

10:16

It's already cutting the geometry on this vertical section and at the bottom.

10:22

So this allows us to remove a secondary operation that's not needed.

10:27

So we can go back and we can take pencil and we can delete it and we can use scallop one last time on this tapered section.

10:37

So in the past we've used things like parallel or we've used 3D contour. But scallop can also work in these areas.

10:45

Once again I'm going to use a selection starting at this outside edge and again I'm going to use avoid touch surfaces,

10:52

because I want to focus just on this area.

10:55

I'm also going to use slope and this time I'm going to go all the way up to 40° as the minimum.

11:01

And I'm going to go to 60° as the maximum.

11:05

For the passes, again I'm going to change this 2.005 and I'll say okay.

11:12

Whenever we're cutting tapered geometry like that it's usually best to use a tapered tool.

11:17

But if you have a large champ for and you have to go in with a rounded tool,

11:21

it's going to be a good idea to explore what both the scallop can do the flow toolpath or even using a 3D. Contour.

11:29

At this point we've created a lot of toolpaths to machine or geometry so let's make sure that we do save before we move on to the next step.