Create a 3-axis finishing toolpath based on a boundary

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Create a three axis finishing tool path based on the boundary.

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After completing this video,

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you'll be able to create a 3D contour tool

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path and use boundary to restrict a tool path

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infusion 3 60 let's carry on with our three axis sample.

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We've already created our three D.

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Adaptive to remove the majority of the stock and we focused on a three D.

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Contour restricted by slope. The next thing that we want to do is explore a three D.

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Contour but this time we wanted it restricted to a selected area.

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So for this I'm going to right click on

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this contour and I'm going to suppress the tool path

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suppressing the tool path will mean that it's going to stay inside of our browser.

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However, it's no longer going to be calculated.

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We're not going to see in process stock and we're

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not going to be able to post this tool path.

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So the next thing that we want to do is we

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want to focus on creating a new 3D contour tool path.

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When we select three D contour,

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let's go ahead and carry on with this half inch ball in bill

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in the geometry section instead of using a silhouette.

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We have a couple of other options.

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We can use a bounding box which can be created based on a two D. Sketch.

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Or we can use a selection which can be

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based on selecting edges or different areas of our design

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for this.

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Let's go ahead and rotate the model just slightly and note

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that the edge selection can be based on a certain area.

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In this case we want to include these two faces as well as the filling at the bottom.

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Once we select that we need to think about the tool containment.

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Whether or not we want to keep the tool inside of our boundary,

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which oftentimes happens when we create a sketch or if we want the tool center

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to go on the boundary or allow the tool to go outside of the boundary.

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For this example, we want to keep the tools centered on the boundary

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in our passes section.

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We want to take a look at the parameters that

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come in for cusp height and maximum step down.

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You can see the cusp height value is relatively small

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and we're going to leave these values as default.

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Another thing that we should think about with our three D tool passes,

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how far the tool could potentially go because we're restricting this to a

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boundary and we're only allowing the tool to be centered on the boundary.

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This tool is not going to drop below our edge.

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However, it's always a good idea for us to restrict the bottom height.

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In this case we're going to select the bottom of that flat area,

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we're going to say okay, and allow the tool path to generate.

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Remember that F seven on the keyboard will allow

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you to toggle on the tool path preview and

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we can see here now that the tool is

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going back and forth across these different areas.

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If we view this from the front,

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we can see that the cusp on the shallow area is much worse than the cusp on the

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steeper area and this has to do with the way in which the tool interacts with our part.

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Let's go ahead and pull this down just a little bit.

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You can see that at the almost horizontal face. The tool contact point is near center

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as we start to go down the wall,

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the tool contact point is going to be on the side of the tool.

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This is going to end up giving us a better finish and this means that

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we should restrict this tool path to being used on near vertical or steeper walls.

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So this is a good way for us to explore these

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options and figure out what is going to work for us.

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In this case let's toggle off the show tool on

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cursor but we are going to leave that tool preview on

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this is a fairly efficient tool path that does work

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well when we are considering near vertical or steep walls,

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but once again, when we're taking a look at near horizontal walls,

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it really does not make the most sense.

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It's always a good idea to play around with these tool paths and

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figure out what is going to work for your geometry for this example.

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However, let's go ahead and select the contour,

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right click and suppress this tool path.

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We are going to leave it in the setup for now,

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but we're going to restrict its ability to affect

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the in process stock so now that it's suppressed,

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