Use 2.5 axis toolpaths to finish caliper surfaces

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Use 2.5 axis tool paths to finish caliber surfaces.

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After completing this video, you'll be able to

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use two D pocket to finish caliber faces

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and use two D contour to finish mounting bosses

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in fusion 3 60. Let's carry on with the data set. From the previous example.

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At this point, we've used an adaptive clearing to remove material from the top hat.

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We've used a facing tool path to get the material down to the top of the part.

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And we've used an adaptive to remove extra material on the part as well

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at this stage.

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The next thing that we need to do is we need to

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take a look at finishing some of the areas of the caliper.

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Remember that we left 0.03 or 30 thou on both the faces as

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well as the sides of all the different areas of the caliper.

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So in order to finish both the side faces and the bottom faces,

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we're gonna be using the two D pocket tool path.

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This is a great way for us to finish off these areas because it will allow us

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to cut both the faces of the areas as well as the sides of our parts.

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We're gonna make sure that we're using tool number eight, which is a Bullnose Mill

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and this will allow us to leave that small radius on all these extra corners

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to get started.

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We're going to navigate to our geometry selection

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and we're going to select this top face.

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We can add additional selections of various pockets that we want to add.

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Noting that those are going to be highlighted in blue and it's

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going to show the darker edge noting that these are open pockets.

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We're gonna move to our heights making sure

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that these are based off the selected contour.

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Then we're gonna move over to our passes section

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and we're going to turn off stock to leave since

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we will be using this as a finishing tool path.

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If we want to,

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we can do multiple depths if we don't want to take the full 0.03 cut in one pass.

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Well, it's not strictly required.

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We can turn that on and play around with this option.

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I'm gonna say 0.02 for the maximum roughing step down.

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And we're gonna say, OK, to take a look at the results,

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this will allow us to create those two D tool paths.

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And you can see that we've got quite a bit of motion going on.

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What ends up happening is we're creating these cuts at 0.02 and

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it's going through multiple steps before it gets to that final depth.

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This obviously adds quite a bit of time that we don't need.

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Let's right. Click on the tool path, go back to edit and take a look at our geometry

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inside of here, we can toggle on rest machining. However, with two D tool paths,

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the rest machining is not model aware.

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This means that it's taking a look at the material that's removed

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by a tool value that we enter in that dialog box.

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So in order for us to finish off these areas, we're gonna toggle off multiple depths,

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say OK, and allow it to regenerate.

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This will allow us to go through and do this in a single pass,

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clearing off those areas and leaving that small radius in the corner.

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One thing that we are noticing here is that we've got

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a gouge or collision issue on the side of the part,

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this is likely done from a lead in or a

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lead out issue coming around the corner of our part.

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This is something that we need to take a look at

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and we want to do this individually for those areas.

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So we're gonna double click on the pocket tool path,

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go to our geometry and deselect these two faces.

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Now, if we reelect it, it thinks that we're gonna be adding extra pockets.

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So what we want to do is find those inside of

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our menu and hit the X to remove it from our selection

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as we scroll through, we can see the first pocket,

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the second pocket and the third pocket

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decide which ones we want to remove and then simply say, ok,

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we'll allow the impro stock to update, make sure that the preview looks ok.

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And then we can move on to finishing off these areas

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while we can try to do this with a two D pocket.

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We can also do this specifically with a two D contour.

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Let's explore what each of those looks like.

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First, we're gonna select two D pocket,

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we're gonna select this area.

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We're gonna move into our linking parameters and we're gonna

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take a look at our lead in and lead outs

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note that we can control these individually.

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In this case, we've got a lead in and a lead out that are linked as the same value

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we're gonna toggle off, same as lead in because the lead in wasn't the problem for us.

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When we take a look at our lead out,

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we have a horizontal lead out of 0.05 a sweep angle

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of 90 degrees and a linear lead out distance of 0.05.

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So when we take a look at these values,

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these are going to be driving away at a tangent direction

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from this edge which is pushing us into this corner.

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So we're going to start by reducing these values

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to a much smaller number in this case,

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And we're going to regenerate this

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when we took a look at the preview. Now we no longer have a gouge in that corner.

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We want to make sure that the material is removed properly.

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So we do need to double check that stock to leave was not turned on

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in the passes section. Stock to leave is going to be on by default for this tool path.

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Once it regenerates, we can see that we now still have that collision.

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So let's right. Click on this tool path, select delete

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and let's try this with a two D contour.

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The two D contour will use the same tool.

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And we're gonna go ahead and select this bottom edge.

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When we use this chain.

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Once again, we want to make sure that we're not taking a look at leaving stock behind,

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but we will need to do this with roughing passes

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because a two D contour is simply gonna follow this.

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It doesn't know that there's additional geometry here to remove.

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So we're gonna toggle on roughing passes

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knowing that this is a half inch tool, we're gonna set passes at 0.2

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and include two stepovers.

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We still need to take care of the linking parameters,

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the lead in and the lead out values.

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If we simply turn off the lead in and the lead out

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and generate this tool path,

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the tool is gonna come in and out

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without causing any issues colliding with the geometry.

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Remember that our two D tool paths are not model aware,

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they're only going to be machining where we specify,

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we can see that a little bit of material is left on this corner

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and we might potentially have an issue with the lead

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in and lead out not cutting the geometry properly.

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This is something that we can verify later,

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but we do need to make an adjustment to those offset values in our multiple passes.

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So instead of doing two passes,

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we could do three or we could increase the maximum step over

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value to be half of the tool or a little bit larger.

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I'm gonna say, OK,

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at 0.22 take a look at the preview and note that we still have some material here.

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Let's modify this one more time and then we can add the additional contour to it

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in the passes section. I'm going to increase this to a number of step over of three.

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And in the geometry section, we want to add the chain on the other side

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will say OK and take a look at the results.

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Now, everything appears to be machined properly using the two D contour tool.

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This might not be the most efficient tool because we are spending

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a lot of time outside of the part without really machining anything.

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There are additional options and things that we can do in tool paths.

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For example, inside of our geometry section,

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we can toggle on stock contours

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instead of using the stock contour as the rectangle we can use

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a silhouette of the part or we can make a selection.

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We're going to use the outside loops say OK,

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and then allow it to regenerate.

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Now, our two D contour is not coming farther out. It's spending less time cutting.

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However, you will note that we do have some potential problems here.

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The tool is now rapiding or cutting through the center of our part.

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This is obviously a problem and it is something that we need to address and deal with.

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So we need to play around with the settings.

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But in this case,

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the easiest option is for me to turn off the stock contours and

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allow it to go back to simply cutting how we originally planned.

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The amount of time that we're going to save on a small part like this for a

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single run is really not worth the time and effort spent to optimize the tool path.

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If you are setting things up for production,

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then it makes sense to spend as much time as you can to optimize your tool paths,

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using sketches to create a boundary for the tool

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path or potentially using things like stock contours.

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In this case,

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we're gonna go back to our named view and make sure that we save this before we move on.