I have two questions/comments about Carbide Create Pro and the 3D toolpaths.
While 3D roughing, the depth per pass setting ignores anything shallower.
a. For example: I am cutting a tapered bowl that varies from .05” to .75” in depth.
i. With a .04” depth per pass setting, it will set limits to the entire cut.
ii. With a.125” setting, it will set the limits to only cut .125” to .75” leaving anything from .05” to .124” untouched.
b. Having the software account for the shallower areas could help reduce roughing times significantly allowing to set deeper pass settings.
While 3D roughing a toolpath that contains curves, I am seeing it cut several hundred small chords along the curve, rather than a smooth path.
a. This is a project that I made that has worked successfully in the past. I can’t pinpoint an exact time or software update when it changed though.
b. I checked the nodes in my file, and they are all smooth curves.
i. If you offset a curve in CC, it will segment it as described above. It would be nice to see that changed also.
c. Not sure if this is a Carbide Create or Carbide Motion issue. The preview in CC Build 813 shows 9 minutes. I stopped the actual cutting at about 1.5 hours.
That’s how it works. The roughing path creates horizontal sections through the model with the Stock to Leave applied, and then cuts pocket paths at each level. Since your depth per cut is 0.125, your first section is at 0.125, 2nd section at 0.250, etc…
This is essentially 2.5 axis milling. It steps down Z to a flat level & cuts in XY. It’s not moving all 3 axes at the same time as in 3 axis milling
Red is the finish surface, Green is the Stock to Leave offset, black is the resulting rough path.
Since there is a Stock to leave, the tolerance on the curve tracing is really loose. It’s a rough path, so it doesn’t need to be perfect.
If you’re wanting a more consistent material removal for the finish path, create a semi-finish path. A finish path with a Stock to Leave & a greater stepover.
Makes sense. I like to overthink. Thanks for your response.
It is doing something strange along my horizontal curves. I realize it needs to break it down to small nodes to cut point to point. On a contour cut, it rolls through the curve in a nice, fast, fluid motion and you don’t see it. The way it’s processing that same curve in my 3D roughing path is almost to a level that you can count each node to node movement. Really strange. I opened both scenarios g-code in NCVIEWER to see what’s going on and nothing seems out of place.
Edit. I am a moron. Programming error. Created a pinch point that was causing hundreds of retracts.
