Not sure if this is going to need to be an education point for me or a legitimate request.
It has been 28 years since Machine shop class & 1 year tool and die apprenticeship, so forgive me if I am wrong here. I have forgotten almost all of the little bit I learned.
I remember cutting on the milling machine and we always went in 1 direction to eliminate the tool climbing . We also tied to avoid plunging into a workpiece in the middle if we could avoid it.
Is it possible to have a surface tool path that will start on the outside boundaries and spiral in to the middle? I feel that would be easier on our cutters, spindles and work pieces.
if you set it up right (some overshoot) there are no places where you plunge and all cut paths are perfectly parallel
so a pocket looks like this (see the vertical cuts)
I just used the engrave org to surface a 5.5x26.25 board. I set the outer frame as 6x27 and used the McFly. It worked but did weird things. It did a full perimeter pass and then went back and did 2 passes above the top and then did a pass in the middle and 2 above that before doing the rest of the lower portion of the board.
I used the linear path. They just didn’t seem logical.