Need Help!- help needed in contour (on) - Surfcam

[madaouk]

Hello ………. I am cutting curves of letters using the contour (on) , on sheet of brass 1mm thickness with a tool of 0.8mm round , so each curve letter has to be cut in 4 layers ..

The problem is that the Z axis is going up instead of plunging down on each layer of cut when cutting the same curve which it doesn’t do when using contour (in or out) and takes lots of time .

[tnik]

in the contour box, click the 2 axis options and set your 'Maximum Feed Between' to a small number like .001. that should force it to plunge.

[madaouk]

thanx tnik but it didnt work , and the 'maximum feed between' was o.oooo

[tnik]

it wont work with zero.. need to set it to a number lower than the movement of the tool.. .001 would probably work..

[madaouk]

tnik ... i tryied a lot but didnt work ..I am using these tool info may be it helps ..
feed rate :100
plung rate : 50
surface speed : 30
feed chip load : 0.0016
plung chip load : 0.0008

[tnik]

none of that has to do with the cutting.. make sure that your contour cut is set to 'on'

set your depth, then in the 2 axis options, set the max feed between to .02mm (roughly .001 inches) , and make sure 'depth first' is checked.. sorry, I wasn't thinking that your using the metric setup.. .001mm is way too small, so surfcam prolly just made it 0.

[moldcore]

I have been using feed between at 0.0 for many, many years with no problem. When I do engraving in Surfcam (doing it as I type this) I always set the gouge check to single, feed between to zero, and the sort type to none. I have these settings saved as “engraving”. The “depth first” setting won’t make any difference and none of these settings should force the cutter up that I have experienced. Only time I’ve seen this is when the Z-Zero or cutting plane was missed up or when doing a projection to a contour surface (talk about screwed up if the projected path is not in the right place!). I wish Surfcam would have an engraving command and better text options.

[tnik]

moldcore, the problem he was having was that he was stepping the tool down 4 times, and each time it would step, it would return to rapid level.. having a setting of zero, or larger than the movement in Z will create this.. setting the max feed between to .001 (.02mm) will make the tool just plunge in Z to the next level, without returning to the safe rapid level.

and I agree, I wish they had a better engraving feature.. but, knowing what settings to use and how to get the geometry/text you want makes using on contour workable.

[madaouk]

tnik & moldcore , nothing worked , I wanted to tell you about the curves , they are not closed curves , so does this makes defferent befor going to the g-code and deleting the Z work ...

[madaouk]

Originally Posted by madaouk tnik & moldcore , nothing worked , I wanted to tell you about the curves , they are not closed curves , so does this makes defferent befor going to the g-code and deleting the Z work ...

ersybsbd

[moldcore]

Tnik,

Your right. I misunderstood the problem. If the curves are not closed, the tool needs to retract to return to the start point for the new depth, it’s not going to reverse directions. To minimize Z moves I make the rapid plane as low as safely possible, i.e. .05 on a flat surface.