Activity 5: Machine steep areas using contours

In this activity, you will use a Contour operation to machine the steep areas of the part. There remains between 0.2 mm and 0.4 mm of material left on the part (0.3 mm stock to leave plus/minus 0.1 mm tolerance). Several semi-finish operations will be used to reduce this material.

Part with 3D Pocket Clearing applied to it (left). Part after using Contour for Steep areas (right).

Prerequisites

• You have applied a 3D Pocket Clearing strategy to the part (Activity 4).

Steps

1. From the Contour dialog, select the #20 - Ø10 mm ball tool.

   1. On the Manufacture toolbar, Milling tab, select 3D > Contour .
   2. On the Tool tab , click Select to access the tool library.
   3. Select the tool 20 - Ø10 mm - ball from the Tutorial4 library.
   4. Click Select to close the Select Tool dialog.

2. Confine machining to steep areas only. This is achieved by limiting the slope range.

   1. Click the Geometry tab .
   2. From the Tool Containment drop-down menu, select Tool Center on Boundary.
   3. Enable the Slope checkbox.
   4. Set From Slope Angle to 60 deg.
   5. Set To Slope Angle to 90 deg.

3. Specify the machining passes parameters.

   1. Click the Passes tab .
   2. Set Tolerance to 0.02 mm.
   3. Set Maximum Stepdown to 1 mm.
   4. Enable the Order by Depth checkbox.
   5. Enable the Stock to Leave checkbox. Use the default values of 0.1mm for this operation.

4. Specify the movements between passes.

   1. Click the Linking tab .
   2. Select Minimum Retraction from the Retraction Policy drop-down menu.
   3. Set Maximum Stay-Down Distance to 10 mm.
   4. In the Ramp group, set Ramping Angle (deg) to 10 deg.
   5. Click OK to automatically start calculating the toolpath. A preview appears on the canvas.

Activity 5 summary

In this activity, you used a 3D Pocket Clearing strategy to remove more of the remaining material where the 20 mm tool from the previous operation could not reach.