Use a 3D pencil toolpath

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In this video, we'll use a 3D pencil tool path.

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After completing this step, you'll be able to create a 3D pencil tool path.

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

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At this point, we've created a 3D ramp tool path to focus our attention on the tapered section in the middle of the body,

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as well as this upper fillet.

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Now we've done this to explore what a 3D ramp tool path can do.

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Now we want to take a look at a 3D pencil tool path which can be used to finish off these fillets.

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It's important to note that there's not just a single tool that can cut this geometry.

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We could use a scallop, we could also use a flow tool path and those would both give us great options to clear out these fillets.

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But the pencil tool path is specifically designed to create a tool path along internal corners and fillets with small radii.

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So we're going to use this and we're going to use our eighth inch ball in mill,

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which exactly matches the radius value of these fillets and we're going to use it to cut that geometry.

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I'm not going to modify any of the geometry parameters.

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I'm going to have it, take a look at the silhouette and in the past this section, I want to note that there is an over thickness value.

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I mentioned earlier that when you're finishing fillets, you generally want to use a smaller diameter than the actual fillet itself.

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Now this is typically because you don't want to fully engage the diameter or the radius of the tool,

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because it's going to cause chatter on the tool when we use a smaller diameter were able to control better where that cut is happening on the tool.

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But for this example we wanted to avoid using and talking about the over thickness.

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So we're using an exact match tool for that specific fillet. Without making any other changes.

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I'm going to say, Okay, and I'm just going to take a look at what fusion 360 does with this information.

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Notice that fusion 360 finds both of those fillets and it's able to create a single pass tool path.

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Now we want to go back into pencil and we want to modify some of the parameters,

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In the Passes section, we can limit the number of stepovers and we can manually enter how many stepovers we want and what we want that value to be.

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We also have something called a by tangent C angle.

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This by tangent C angle will control how much of the tool is in contact with that fillet.

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I'm going to increase this value to 30 degrees and I'm going to reduce the step overvalue 2.25 with three stepovers and say okay.

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Now you can see that even though I limited it to three Stepovers, it created three before the fillet and three after the fillet.

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And it did the same thing on the side here.

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When we take a look at the geometry.

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If I hide the cutting moves, you can see that it does a pretty good job of machining that fillet geometry and blending it into the surrounding areas.

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This is exactly what this tool path is used for.

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However, you will note that at the bottom of the taper we have these larger steps,

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where when we were using our 3D ramp tool path, it just wasn't able to cut the geometry like expected.

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So that's something that we're going to have to come back and address.

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But for right now it seems like the 3D pencil tool path was a great option for us to finish off those fillets.

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So it's a great time for us to save and move on to the next step.