It’s true I don’t entirely see the sense in having a potential 2*SO spacing in the middle, but that’s what it does, so that’s what it does. Personally, I’d prefer if the software opted to never do a bigger stepover than the specified value. The way it works is that it does a full WOC on the first pass (which it obviously has to do) and then potentially comes back with a full WOC on the return pass which it could avoid doing by either reducing the stepover slightly to balance the difference over all the tool paths or simply make the last stepover smaller instead of making the first stepover larger. But, that’s just my opinion and doesn’t matter as it would be pretty bad to drastically change the pocketing behaviour at this point!
That said, I don’t normally use CC either as I normally use Fusion 360 and I generally avoid pockets (using adaptive clearing instead) so I honestly don’t know what Fusion does in this case so it may do the same thing for all I know.
How can this not be considered a bug? Does this only happen when the stepover is greater than the radius of the cutter? Either way, the objective of the pocket path is to remove all the material it can reach between the boundaries/vectors selected. ??
The default SO is half of the tool diameter. If you’re unlucky, you end up with a full tool diameter difference between the first and second pass in the pocket. Theoretically, that wouldn’t leave a sliver. Realistically, tools that have the same diameter as the shaft are almost always slightly undersized which is how you can up with a sliver in the middle.
OP here. I posted mid-flight, the sliver was so thin, a simple flick of the finger dislodged it.
But I have found that I like pulling out my Veritas Pocket Plane from Lee Valley for trimming off tabs.
John