Need Help!- Facing lead in...

[Jason3]

Hi all,

I'm having some difficulty with this facing op. For some reason, it wants to spiral in, rather than entering the cut with the usual radius in X-Y. No doubt it's something obvious, but I'm stumped - anyone have any ideas?

Many thanks, Jason

[Dan B]

I did see that once, and I could get it to repeat. That's about all I remember. It was an easy fix (just a value I entered needed to be corrected). When I get a chance I'll see if I can make it do it again, and tell you what I did to get around it. I do remember I was going to contact Joakim about it, but then realized it was my fault.

Sorry this isn't much help yet.

Dan

[svenakela]

Isn't that a setting in the Path dialog? I can't check it right now, but can do it tonight. If not Dan is quicker than me that is.

[svenakela]

Back to the O.P: Is this a Z Leveling operation?
If that's the case, did you set or change the setting Radius Lead in/out or Ramp Approach in the Traverse tab?

[Dan B]

Sorry about the delayed response, but I haven't yet been able to reproduce this. I'll let you know when (if) I do, and how I did it.

Dan

[Jason3]

Thank you for your help, Dan & Sven! I did not notice that you had replied, and had resolved to use a different strategy to get the part done, and revisit this odd issue later.

Originally Posted by svenakela Isn't that a setting in the Path dialog? I can't check it right now, but can do it tonight. If not Dan is quicker than me that is.

I thought it must be, but I wasn't able to find any settings that materially changed the result.

Originally Posted by svenakela Back to the O.P: Is this a Z Leveling operation? If that's the case, did you set or change the setting Radius Lead in/out or Ramp Approach in the Traverse tab?

The objective was profiling a panel perimeter. I'm sorry, I don't recall which process I selected now. The small stepover is due to a lack of spindle power, the reason for the large stepdown was an attempt to increase the axial depth and reduce the radial depth of cuts for better surface finish to the edge and longer tool life. I believe I did try changing both of those parameters you mentioned. I'm not sure what the result was now, but at the time I wasn't able to stop the tool path spiraling - the ramp setting seemed to work as intended though. After some more experimentation I found that it seemed to be related to the stepover setting - with a sufficiently large stepover, the spiraling stopped. If the stepover was small enough that the lead in was more than a 360° arc, then it spiraled as pictured. I'd note that the stepover setting had exactly the effect on the lead in that I would have expected the Lead-in radius setting to have, with the unwanted side effect of the spiraling whenever I reduced the stepover to something my spindle could handle. Hope that makes sense!

Originally Posted by Dan B Sorry about the delayed response, but I haven't yet been able to reproduce this. I'll let you know when (if) I do, and how I did it. Dan

Thank you, it would be good to hear whether you can replicate it. I think I was using about 0.25 mm stepover with a 3.175 mm (1/8") cutter, and at about 5 mm depth per pass.

I did install the latest MadCAM update, and had the same issue, but the calculation times dropped pleasingly so that I was able to determine much faster that it still wasn't working

Many thanks and best regards,

Jason.