Cutting Slot With Ball Mill

[PMF]

Hi,

I am trying to cut a slot on a radius. So far I have not been able to figure out how to simply cut this .875" wide slot with a .875" ball mill. All I want to do is slowly plunge and cut along the X and Z (in this case) without moving side to side in the Y axis, except for positioning over the slot. I hope this makes sense.

Thank you very much for your help!

[jrmach]

Draw a line to represent where you want the bottom of the tool to follow.make sure your drawing in z axis.Now contour the arc in the direction you want to cut.Under 3 axis tool paths,pick engraving.Fill in wizard.Pick manual tools and enter .875 for diameter and .4325 for radius.Compute and post.

[BurrMan]

You could project your line onto that surface.

[PMF]

Thank you jrmach and burrman,

That does work, but I not exactly what I am looking for. I can go another route. I can use a z axis slice and get close. Our Mill is very weak and can't load much code, so I was trying to eliminate as many steps as possible, yet step down at .050 or so at a time.

Thank you again for your responses, it did help!

[BurrMan]

Here's a BobCad file of doing it with a slice planar toolpath:

[BurrMan]

Come to think of it, after the slice planar example, the engrave option wouldnt work as the geometry would be deformed by the ball mills extents at the lower areas....

[PMF]

Thank you Burrman!

I have attached a model that is close to what I am trying to do. If you change the end mill to .875 with .4375 radius, then it will not machine down to the bottom. I think I will try to open the slot .001 and see what that does just out of curiosity.

[BurrMan]

Hi PMF,
Using the Z-level rough operation will be looking at "the material it is removing" (Think of the inverse of what you see in the viewport) and will be constrained by the step parameters in the features dialogue, so it will stop when the next step cant be accomplished and move to the next.. It is not a "finish operation" looking at the surface to finish...So, the slice planar I posted would read the surface and do the finish.. You could either set a step down in the slice planar, or if you dont like that path from that, run the z-level rough and then the slice planar as a finish.