Is it possible to do profile milling with Carbide Create? By that I mean where you’re milling your object out from the outside in at a constant depth, with a step-in process at each pass so all movement is at the x/y and none at the z?
No. Pocket milling follows the shape of the boundary, but only goes inside-out. You want the same algorithm, but with an outside-in strategy. CC doesn’t do this. The next best option with CC is to make a boundary bigger than the part & use face milling. Most of the passes should start outside the part, but it will be a lace/raster/zig-zag pattern. So some plunges may occur near inner boundaries.
What are you trying to achieve here?
An example for me personally would be to use a core-box bit to add ‘handles’ to the side of a board. The only way I can think of to do that now would be to create a series of open vectors that completely describe the path of the bit and use no-offset contours.
It’s doable, but very tedious, and changes are very time-consuming.
The main objective is a smooth outer wall with no evident stepping. I’ve seen enough examples of profile milling to be confident about achieving it that way. So far I haven’t been able to achieve it with standard step down contour milling.
Do the step down but leave a small amount of material on the face you want smooth. Then do a last pass at full depth taking it down to final dimensions. I haven’t done this in CC (mostly because I haven’t seen witness marks to the step downs in the materials I usually cut). I do recall seeing this as an option in Vectric VCarve. (i.e full depth final clean up pass.
John
To clarify, as I’ve seen there are different approaches to profile milling, I mean this sort…
The one problem with this method is that the initial plunge is ‘right on the line’. I have found that it leaves a definite visible difference where the plunge was.
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I agree, it would be nice if there was a way to combine the toolpaths and keep the bit down.