The Machining Process

With every job I run, the machine plunges the tool into the part, then works it’s way out.
is there a possibility of working with the MeshCam guys to make the process start from the outside?

I’m cutting 6061 aluminum, and the plunging is hard on the tooling as well as the machine.

James, unfortunately not yet. I’ve asked Rob (the MeshCAM guy, singular :slight_smile: ) about this years ago and he said he didn’t have a way to do that. Maybe now that he is working on the 2.5D-specific functionality he might be able to. Actually for pockets I’d want to start from the inside out and perimeters from the outside in…

But so far, the only thing to do is limit the pluge rate in MeshCAM. That applies for any move downwards from the Retract Height. It’s slower but safer.

Randy

Yeah, I keep it really low… saves on the tooling, and most of the time, it will stall the machine … that’s scary lol

What might be even nicer would be ramping into cuts. For my 2.5D work I use SheetCam, which has the ability to ramp. I use 5 degrees so it is a pretty shallow ramping down. But on narrow pockets, it’s like the tool is running down a fire escape–zig, zag, zig, zag, zig, zag back and forth in the pocket until it gets to the level.

That would be very hard to implement in MeshCAM with the STL input of generic 3D shapes. That’s another aspect I’ve asked Rob about way back when, and there’s been discussion over on the MeshCAM forum about ramping and outside-in vs. inside-out.

At this point Rob is so busy with the Nomads and Shapeokos that I don’t know how much “quality time” he has to devote to major MeshCAM developing.

Randy

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