I am trying to use an adaptive clearing path to do outside profile cuts in aluminum, however I am struggling with trade off between chip clearance and program length having to do with how wide I allow my “slot” to become.
Clearly the slot has to be bigger than the tool plus some clearance , but I am wondering just how wide this really needs to be? Anyone have some best practices they follow.
At .140" wide, using a .125" tool, my cycle time is approximately on par with a traditional slotting operation with DOC limited to match the volumetric material removal rate.
However, with the slot more like .230" (which is where fusion like is it with the default minimum cutting radius and helix diameter, the cycle time is doubled.
I will be babysitting the program and manually blowing chips out, so shorter is better, if the .140"ish slot size provides ENOUGH chip clearance.
Just as a follow up, my settings did not work and a nerfed an end mill in the process. Two problems:
the .140 (I actually settled on .155 before the first attempt) channel width resulted in trochoidal circles that were far too tight and caused too much wobble and vibration in the machine, at least at 450mm/min.
10% stepover was way too much. I got re-weld on the tool almost instantly.
Luckily I was able to save the job by cancelling early in the run. I changed the tool, decreased to a 5% stepover, and let the tool clear whole interior areas rather than a slot. Made more chips but the result was better.
For the larger and outside profiles, I changed to a traditional slotting path. .015" DOC, 450mm/min, and the machine was pretty happy here. Anyway, got through it! Thanks!
