[MetalShavings]

Since it was cutting the straight flutes at that time, it looks like it didn't retract before indexing to the next straight flute, or not enough. Since that is at the end of the program, and straight flute cuts, it should be easy to spot any issues in the program.


Did you manually reset the A axis zero before you started, or did the program zero it out?

The barrel will look nice in any case!

I know it looks that way from the photo but that second-to-the-last flute that my end mill veer of course out of had not yet been cut to full depth before it made that left hand turn. Another thing was, I mentioned that like an idiot I stood their without pressing the "E-Stop" which allowed my end mill to make a second bad pass. What I mean is that the first time my end mill decided to cut to the left it did so till it reached the top center as shown in the photo. Because I failed to stop it, it retracted and came back to that second-to-the-last little flute, made one more pass within that flute and then veered to the left again stopping where it stopped before, retracting and then heading back to the previous flute again. Hope that makes sense. What I mean is that my end mill did the identical moves twice. This tells me that it wasn't an insufficient retraction before moving to the next and last flute to be milled. It hadn't yet reached the full depth of the flute it veered off course from. It was really crazy.

I do agree that since it all happened near the end of all the tool paths, It may be easier to get a fix on exactly what happened once I get that far along. I did manually zero or index my barrel at the center of the barrel itself, (center of the barel in the X,Y and Z) with the top dead center as my X and Y Zero. Since my model's coordinate was in the center of the barrel In the Z-axis I touched off my end mill on the surface of the barrel and set my Z height at .5". I don't think this 4th-Axis anomaly had anything to do with where I zeroed my Axis'.

I may never know why this error happened other than whatever amount of blame rests on me for not fully test/air cutting each and every flute before doing any actual milling. I'll just have to wait and see what I find when I go over that G-Code. For now, I'm just glad to have gotten this far without anything worse happening. I'll be back after I've finished the project. I still have to repair that bit of damage and then inlet the stock and I'll be able to assemble it for testing.

MetalShavings