Roughing depth

[JasonPensack]

Does anyone else have a problem with the Roughing toolpath not machining all of the way to the bottom of pockets? I have messed with the min and max step depths and step depth adjust. It only wants to machine halfway down the pocket.

I'm using Creo 2.0 M100.

Thanks in advance.

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[NickMihelich]

Every time it happens to me I have to adjust my tool deffinition because its not sticking out far enough

[JasonPensack]

The pocket depth is .109" and my flute length is .570" and stickout is .600" so that is fine. I have my min. step depth set at .01" and my max step depth at .075". Depending on what I set my max step depth to is what the level is that the one slice is created at. All I want is for it to take two equal depths of cut.

[JasonPensack]

So after trying a bunch of different things I got it to work. I had to set my max step depth to the step depth that I want. I also had to set step depth adjust to no. I would imagine that this is a bug.

[NickMihelich]

i avoid the min step_depth and rough_scallop_control they do seem buggy.

[JasonPensack]

Nick,

Good call on the min_step_depth. I set it back to the default - and was able to change step depth adjust back to yes and it worked perfect.

Thanks!

[KenFarley]

I notice you use an actual number for the FREE_FEED and RETRACT_FEED. I don't know if you do this to simulate a RAPID motion for those bits, but if so, you can set those two to 0 (zero) in place of the default "-", and it will use RAPID for them. Something I found out by accident.

If you already knew this, disregard my unsolicited information.

[NickMihelich]

I'm glad you brought that up. If your machine is like mine and is not set for linear rapid motions then you can set fast positioning feed rates to avoid any collisions that would occur otherwise.

[NickMihelich]

Also the built in accel and decel on our machine really helps when your part's mass is larger. I would wear out our ball screws rapiding it but then we are not doing productions runs, slow and steady wins for us. If we were doing production I would have the control changed to linear rapids and let it fly 1600 ipm (scary fast)

[KenFarley]

Okay, I was just asking because for the longest time I didn't know that setting the thing to zero was the way to get it to use rapid, especially for the retracts. So I'd put a high feedrate (well the max for the machine I was using was 50 in/min, if you want to call that high), and then edit the posted code to make it a rapid. Dangerous and annoying stuff, that hand editing.

[SteveLucas]

Ah the good old days of screaming fast 50 IPM rapids... The first NC machine(not CNC) back in 1977 I programmed for was a Bridgeport Series 2 paper tape machine had rapids of 40 IPM and I wondered if I could ever hit the stop button in time to stop a crash!!

Kenneth you brought back some memories with that sentence.