Hints and Tips: Rough Waterline Cutting Procedures

Volume Milling - Parallel, Spiral, Stock Spiral Cutting / By Surfaces

• The part surfaces do not have to be trimmed to a common edge. You do not need to define contours.

• Check surfaces or Part2 surfaces may be specified to define regions to avoid.

• Full gouge checking is available for surfaces. For part surfaces, gouge checking is also performed within a surface with a curvature smaller than the cutter radius.

• You can define several types of approach and retract.

• The following machining techniques are available:

• • Spiral Cutting: collapsing pocket, inside out or outside in.

  • Parallel Cutting: parallel straight lines at a defined angle. The side step may be defined as fixed value or by scallop.

  • Stock Spiral Cutting: the milling is performed with only one side of the cutter, when used on an open area.

• Several possibilities exist for machining between main layers.

• It is possible to machine either by layer or by regions.

• You may specify the entry point, inside or outside the enclosed region. However, in the following two cases the your entry point will be ignored, and Auto Entry Points will be used: if the region is closed, or if the region is open but the cutter motions will cause gouging.

• Optimized entry points can be calculated so that each machining area has a single entry point, common for all Z-levels. If an Entry Offset is specified for a closed region, the system will use the Optimized Entry Point and ignore the Entry Offset. If the region is open, the system will use the Auto Entry Point, disregarding the Optimized Entry Point.

• By using the Mill Finish Pass parameter, you can add a finish pass after the rough passes. Either the finish can be done after all rough milling is completed, or the finish can be performed for each layer immediately after the rough milling for that layer.

• Use the Use Remaining Stock option to keep track of current stock status, and perform the optimization conditions of rapid motion gouge checking and removing air motions.

Note: Using Use Remaining Stock is not equivalent to activating gouge checking and air cutting removal through the Optimizer. When the Optimizer is used, the procedure is run first, then the optimization is performed on the resultant cutter motions. The Use Remaining Stock modal uses a special algorithm that analyzes the stock throughout the procedure, with optimization always in effect. For this reason, using Use Remaining Stock can result in different cutter motions than using the Optimizer. Use Remaining Stock should not be used if air motion removal is activated in the Optimizer.

• Finish waterline cutting can be performed by choosing Surface Milling, by Layers.