I have been asked by my daughter to make her a picture frame. I added outline vectors to pocket the middle and to speed up the 3d cuts. I have the stl she chose and created tool paths. In the simulation, as in the actual cut project, there are uncut ledges around the base I can’t figure out how to get them off.
If there are better ways to set the toolpaths, please let me know that too.
Any help or guidance will be greatly appreciated.
For the future - you can upload a C2D file directly here on the forums.
I think you are just seeing the effect of using a ball-mill - at the bottom of the cut, it will be cupped.
Since the mill you are using is 1/8", have you tried doing a contour cut using a 1/8" endmill?
Without:
Contour on the outside vector:
If that’s what you are looking for, you’d need to add in all the other areas that need to be cleared.
The file was too big andbthe forum would not take it. I tried a contour cit after the finish 3d and the contour cut left gaps.
If you are willing to carve into the wasteboard, the other thing you could do is to say that the Stock Thickness is deeper than the actual stock. If you say it is 1/16" deeper than it really is, the ball mill will plunge that much into the wasteboard, and that would be deep enough to get past the ball portion of the ballmill.
Could you try again with the contour, and post a screenshot of the gaps?
Here is the 3D view of your model:
I believe you’ll do better w/ a #202 for roughing:
One concern is a #101 only has a 1/2" cutting flute length:
(and I don’t think the incredibly high stepover helps with a tool which is so large relative to the size of details)
The high stepover is better utilised for a smaller tool, iterating down w/o skipping sizes to arrive at a #121:
(but you’ll need to ensure that your selection of geometry for the toolpath does not have the tool cutting deeper than the flute length)
I worked on the file some more and changed my first roughing bit to a 202 as suggested.
I added additional iterations of 1/8 and 1/16 but don’t see any changes, just additional time cutting which leaves to believe I did not understand the suggestion correctly.
I will be purchasing longer bits that will cut all the way through the material but used the feeds and speeds for what was in the respective databases for the bit diameter.
I would greatly appreciate someone looking at my file and telling me how to make it better or quicker.
Due to the time estimate in toolpaths, I would prefer not to cut it as the cut time will exceed the amount of time even I can sit and watch the machine work.
The file is too large to attach here.
I have an additional question on setting Outline vectors on a STL. I just kept entering numbers until what I was hoping for showed up. I hope there is a better way.
You go from a 1/4" tool for roughing:
to a 1/32" for finishing:
skipping 1/8" and 1/16" sizes.
The community has written a bit on this sort of thing at:
I will note that all the mirrors like this which I have seen have not been made of a single piece, but are instead pieced together in sections — I’d worry about warping.
I’d also worry about the frame breaking across the grain
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