Create a 3D contour toolpath

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In this lesson, will create a 3D contour toolpath.

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After completing this lesson, you'll be able to: Create a 2D and 3D contour toolpath.

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In Fusion 360, we're going to use our fsae rim front setup.

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At this point, we've created a 3D Adaptive Clearing operation.

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And now we want to focus our attention on just one of the areas of the rim so we can later create some toolpath patterns.

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So we're going to focus our attention solely in this area. We want to talk about the differences between the 2D contour and a 3D contour.

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Before we start creating our operations, we’re going to navigate back to the Design Workspace.

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We're going to create a new sketch on the top of our part.

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I'm going to use my center diameter circle.

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I'm going to create a circle that comes out to the outside of the rim and one that is slightly inside.

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Then using dimensions, I want to apply some basic dimensions 185 for the inside and we'll set this at 260 for the outside.

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Then I want to use my line tool to create some lines that go from the inside to the outside circle.

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I want to do this on both sides and then we need some geometry to snap them to.

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So we can use Create, Project/Include and Project to bring some references in.

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I'm simply going to bring in some points so that way they're not included in the sketch.

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The points won't be used for any selection, so it's very easy for us to use them as a reference.

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Once we have those points, we can then add coincident constraints between our line and each of the points.

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Notice that second one was over constraining it but I still tried to apply it anyways, just in case the line wasn't fully defined.

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Everything here is now fully defined.

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We can use our modified trim to get rid of the outside of the circle.

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Once we do that, a warning pops up, telling us that constraints or dimensions were removed.

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But everything is still fully defined.

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Now that we have this area that we can focus our 3D contour toolpath on,

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let's navigate back to Manufacture and let's talk about creating first a 2D contour.

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We're going to go to our 2D drop-down and select 2D contour.

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We're going to carry on using our 1/2” flat, make sure that we're using aluminum finishing.

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The geometry for a 2D contour is going to be based on a selection.

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Specifically a chain that's created based on an edge or a face that we select.

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In this case, we're going to select an edge that's not in 2D, it's not planar.

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But it will automatically press it down to make sure that it's a planar selection.

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From here we can move to heights,

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and based on the selected contour, I'm going to put -106 to allow the toolpath to go just below the bottom of that edge.

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I also want to come in and add multiple depths because right now the tool can only go an inch at a time.

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And you notice that the warning tells us that the flute length is an inch.

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But right now it's set at 1.5.

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So I'm going to set this at 1” which is the maximum that we can cut with the single pass and say OK.

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When we do this, notice that we get a warning for the toolpath.

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When we take a look at this, it tells us that it exceeds the clearance height.

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Now this doesn't necessarily mean that we can't use the operation, but if we want to explore what's going on, we can take a look at our heights.

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We can see that our clearance height is based on our Retract plus 0.4.

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The Retract is based on the stock top plus 0.2 and the stock top is the top of our stock.

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When we look at this linking warning that we're getting and we take a look at our linking parameters,

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we can see that the Safe Distance right now is set to 1.03937.

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This is a value that it's trying to meet for our Safe Distance.

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In this case, because we're dealing with stock that is the exact shape of the outside of our part,

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I'm going to drop this number down and we're gonna say OK and see if we can get rid of that warning.

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So now that we've reduced that Safe Distance, you can see that we no longer have the warning and we're cutting that geometry with the 2D contour.

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The next thing that we want to do is we want to create our 3D contour.

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Now the 3D contour and all the 3D operations are model aware.

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Just like our 3D Adaptive we didn't have to select any geometry.

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We just told it that we needed to look inside of the stock boundary and just to go ahead and machine what you could.

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The 3D contour is great when we have near vertical walls.

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These steep walls like the back wall in our rim pocket here is not quite vertical,

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which means that we can't take just a traditional endmill in and clean it out like we did with the 2D contour.

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And because the walls are not the same, the side walls are vertical and the back walls tapered,

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we can't come in with a tapered endmill and clean it out either.

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So we're going to use that 3D Contour.

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We're going to focus on using a ball endmill.

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From our VMC Library, we’ll grab our 1/4" ball endmill and we'll grab aluminum finishing for our cutting data.

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Then inside of our geometry section, we're going to tell it that the machining boundary is a selection of our choosing.

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We're going to give it that sketch we created and tell it that we wanted to just stay in this area.

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We're going to use the contact point boundary.

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And anytime you have any questions about what these settings do,

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you can always hover the cursor over them and see if it will give you a little bit more information.

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

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We’re going to say OK, allow it to generate this operation and then we can decide what needs to change.

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You'll notice that when we look at this operation, it's gone and cleaned out that fillet, but it hasn't really done much more.

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And this is because the default values for the maximum stepdown.

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Right now, it's going down 3/4".

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That's obviously not going to give us the resolution we need.

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So I'm going to manually enter a value 0.015625.

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Again, we can use CAM expressions which we’ll cover a little bit later.

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But right now we're going to use this manual value.

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Also note that Order by Islands doesn't really do us any good in this case.

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So we're going to turn it off and say OK.

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Now that we've decreased that stepdown, you can see that it's getting quite a bit closer.

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It's going in and it's machining these areas but it's still leaving a little bit of geometry.

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In order for us to drive the tool, we're going to have to add a bit more geometry.

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So in order to do this, I'll navigate back to the Design workspace and this time I'm going to focus on my Rim Blank.

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I'm going to activate it, I’mgonna rotate it around, navigate to surfaces and I'm going to create an offset surface on the bottom.

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I'm gonna bring it down just slightly and say OK.

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Now I can hide the Rim Blank and bring back the Rim Front and then work my way back to the Manufacture workspace.

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What I'm gonna do is I'm going to modify my 3D contour operation.

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I'm going to go into my geometry and tell it that I have a set of surfaces I wanted to avoid.

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And the avoid surfaces are going to be that entire offset surface body we just created.

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So we'll select the entire body and will simply say OK.

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So what we're doing here is we're telling the tool that we wanted to go down to the surface but not touch it.

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We don't want it to go past it.

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And this is allowing us to restrict the tool depth so that we're not cutting down farther than we need to.

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We could of course put a manual value in there such as selecting a point.

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But in some cases because we have 3D geometry, that single point might not give us the result we want.

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So sometimes an offset surface like that is going to help us control the tool and the motion that the tool is creating.

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I'm going to expand this and I want to also hide that sketch we created, which is in the Top Level Sketch folder,

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because we're not going to need it right now.

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But let's go ahead and take a look at a simulation of what we've done.

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We're going to go to Actions and Simulate and just make sure that we don't have any collisions or anything that we need to worry about.

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Remember that the collisions will show up in red in the bottom section here,

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and you'll notice that we do have a couple spots that come up as red where there is a collision.

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We can see that there's really not a collision with the holder, but it's thinking that it's colliding with some stock here.

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Ultimately, what we need to do is we need to come back and clean out this bottom face,

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so we'll likely do that and then simply put it a little bit earlier in the operations.

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Because of that, I'm not concerned with this instance of a collision because it's going to where the hole is,

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and it's thinking that it's colliding with stock, but really in this case it's going to be okay.

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We'll reevaluate it once we come back and clean out that bottom face.

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I'm happy with the results here.

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We've cleaned out the small cusp that was left between our 2D and our 3D contours.

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This fillet on the edge looks pretty good and the back wall, the resolution looks pretty good.

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There's likely a little bit more work that we can do here blending this fillet in and that can happen by adjusting some of those 3D contour settings.

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There is no limit to the number of things that we can do when we start talking about these settings.

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We can add a small amount of offset here, for example, 0.06,

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and allow the tool to come just pass that boundary and allow it to blend the geometry a little bit more.

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That doesn't guarantee that we're going to be able to blend this and we might have to do a bit more work.

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Well for right now, I'm happy with the results and this is a great place for us to save so that way we can move on to our next step.