tricordial milling

[winaa]

hi I need to mill a slot with a long cutter that is prone to vibration. I need to use this tool due to the depth of the slot. Its a very basic slot that 158mm long 32mm wide.
Can anyone help me with the code for this?
I have access to both mastercam X2 and Bobcad24 I have tried using these for the slot but they both just ramp down to the cutting depth then machine the slot by sidemill, I know this will cause vibration.
Basically it would be a series of interlocking circles with a radius of half the slot width to the correct length.
thanks.

[OptionCNC]

How deep is the slot?
What kind of material?

I'd drill it out with a 3/4 first, pop some holes in the slot first to get the majority of it out then go in with a 3/4" em and rough it out...

Shouldn't NEED to use Tri-milling for something like that. Tri milling works best for larger pockets. expecially with a MINICUT endmill...

[Kiwi]

I'm not familiar with tricordial milling as I don't have a cam program with that feature.
Is this the sort of path you require?
The path shown is for a 10mm cutter.

[winaa]

Yeah thats the sort of path I was looking for. I thought there would be some way of coding it without cam software being just a straight slot. I got close the other day but while i got the spiral to move in the X axis the radius increased as well.
I actually generated a tool path in Bobcad 23 but at over 4000 lines for 1 simple slot I thought Ill try something else.
As OptionCNC stated plunge milling or drilling a series of holes might be a good alternative.
Is that bobcad version21 in your pic?
Did you draw the tool path by hand?
I tried to make a contour but couldn't get that to work.

[Kiwi]

...Did you draw the tool path by hand?.....

No, I've written a VBasic program to generate the code which I pasted into BCC ver21.

If you can supply the start and end centres co-ords of the slot with the tool diameter and tool step-over I can supply you some code.
Another way would be to do a loop, step along in G91 (increment) and repeat.