I was just planning a rather small/detailed 3D carve, where the finishing pass would use a #121 ball cutter. I realized before starting the job that the #121 is tapered, and has a rather small length of cut, and that I didn’t know whether the generated toolpath would actually stay clear of the walls left by the roughing pass. Is this something Carbide Create takes into consideration, when using Carbide 3D tools? Does it use the shank diameter or cutter diameter (and possibly taper angle)?
CC is not able to take complex tool profiles into account or depict them - just end mills, ball mills & V-cutters with straight shanks.
Tapered ball mills don’t usually present too much of an issue unless you’re carving quite deep with closely spaced features - like 1/2" deep V-carved letters. Then the expanding diameter of the taper ends up ‘bleeding’ the edges together.
No, Carbide Create does not depth limit a tool which has a cutting diameter which is narrower than the shank diameter into consideration.
It will show, for example, a 1/32" tool cutting all the way around a part to a depth of 1", even though such a cut is impossible and will break the tool.
Similarly, for 3D toolpaths, if there is a vertical feature which is taller than the cutting flute length of such a tool, and into which the shank of the tool will collide, there is no warning of this collision.
1 Like
Thank you for the clarification!
That makes sense, but it’s also somewhat disappointing. It doesn’t seem like a terribly difficult crash to detect, if you disregard toolpath/group temporality. Especially considering these are cutters with known parameters. I’ll add it to the list of external tools to write 
This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.