I am moving this discussion to it's own thread. I have been trying to program the toolpaths for this part in Mcam X MR 2. I am using the genereic Haas post that was with Mcam X and I am using a new TM-1 with less than 100 cutting hours on it and all brand new Kennametal tooling. The part is being cut from a 3.5" diameter round of 6061 aluminum. The part was drawn in and exported from Alibre Expert, then read into Mcam.
I am just learning CAM from scratch and I am having a real hard time getting a decent surface finish. I bought the surfacing CD from "Tips for Manufacturing" and I have been through the lessons over and over but I still can't get it right. The issue is on the arcs I get a real choppy surface. The post comes out with a whole mix of arcs and short line segments. I tried setting my tolerance down to 0.0005 with arc filtering set at 2:1, one way arcs, xy arcs only. My min radius is 0.02 and max is 99.9. When that wouldn't work I have tried setting the tolerance up and down, setting filtering from off to 1:1 to 3:1 and changing the min radius all over the map. When that wouldn't work I tried turning filtering off and set the tolerance as low as the program would let me. In all cases when I post I get a choppy mix of short line segments and arcs as small as a few degrees to arcs as large as 180 degrees but not consistent in how they are intermixed with short xy moves. Note that at the suggestion of someone on the Cnczone Haas forum I tried hand programming several different size and radius arcs and circles and cut them on my machine to make sure it was not machine adjustment or machine control issues that were hanging me up. When hand coding arcs or circles the machine cuts a beautiful flawless surface. Same if I use the conversational programming option on the Haas. So here is what the part looks like. I'll post some specific questions in a separate note. I could really use some help as I am getting so frustrated I am ready to just give up.
Maxi