Help Controlling Double Angle Cutter

Hey everyone, long time no speak.

Well, after digging into MeshCAM intensely and isolating myself for a few months, I’ve emerged a small business owner who manufactures bespoke buffalo horn eyewear (find me on Facebook or Instagram). I’ve been working on minimizing the hand finishing necessitated on any give piece, and one element I’m getting stuck on is using a double angle cutter to mill the groove for my lens.

Essentially, I need to plot a path that moves down to a particular height, then moves in increasingly large paths until optimal depth is reached, then retract safety back from the piece, then up.

Am I best off trying to do this in raw g-code (hopefully not, as I have yet to enlighten myself to that skill), or should I be able to accomplish this through MeshCAM, or Carbide Create?

Thanks very much,
Chad Sobodash ABOC

You can create toolpaths for such a tool using MeshCAM or Carbide Create — I believe Carbide Create will be easier, but you won’t be able to see the preview — just draw a series of paths and use a Toolpath | Contour | No offset path option and save each one with a sensible name, and send them sequentially, stopping after the appropriate file.

Very cool! I am no expert here but this sounds like a job best done in Fusion 360. MeshCAM from experience would not deal with this well.

Hi Chad,

I’d be concerned with Wills approach that it would retract vertically after each path.

I assume that your frames are flat, with no need for the cutter to move in x,y,z to follow the contours? In that case, Carbide Create can do it, but you will want to check through the G code for Z moves and remove all but the first and last ones.
Search for “G0Z” in the G code.

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Good point about the retraction — you’d need to locate the begin/end point to account for that, or hand-edit the G-Code to control for that as you noted.

Thanks, that was my concern as well. The frames are cut flat and then pressed under heat to take on their final curvature. I’m poorly versed with G code, but this gives me a good starting point.

So, the idea would be to create contour tool paths in Carbide Create increasing in size to create the desired depth, then modify the resulting G code to get the Z to move down first, then after the contour tool paths, move in the X to clear the newly carved area, then Z to retract.

My only other question would be what do I do about bit selection? Just figure based on what the head size of the double angle cutter is and let it assume it’s a normal end mill? For these purposes I suppose that should work.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

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