[pejaer]

Anyone want to volunteer to help with this one?

I have round stock I want to machine down by about .030 or so all the way around, and then put in two flats and makes some holes for some setscrews to hold a small pin...there is a small .021 (I think) hole for a pin too on the side.

I know this is better on a lathe...but....

I should be able to machine about 1/4 at a time....I don't care right now about flipping/turning a few times...but where I can see that I am getting stuck is that I want to stop Sprutcam from milling into my vice (I guess one way around this is to use the fixture capability in Sprut...). In other words, how do I stop the waterline or face operation to machine only the part sticking out of my vice? By the way, I am holding the stock with a V-face in my vice and horizontal...I think you can probably picture it...

Thanks.

[pejaer]

It hit me that I might be able to restrict the milling area by creating a work piece stock (in this case, about half a cylinder)...and hopefully SC will only try to mill the stock material...in case someone has a quick comment, I attached a PDF picture of the part, but did not get a chance to try this stock material idea.

Is this what CAM/Sprut is all about? Finding the tricks to get it to work like you want?

[pejaer]

If anyone is following, I bagged the idea to shorten my stock material because SC ignored this with the planing feature and decided it will run the cutter over my part where no stock existed...I find that strange.

Gerry gave me the idea to use a long cutter around the perimeter. I will try a 3" on this 4" part and do a little more that half with it standing up in my V jaw. I understand that my surface will probably be shoddy, because the pc will probably bend some. I am going to mill Delrin then try Al.

I am posting this because hole drilling threw my for a loop in past attempts. It might have been more related to other issues like my Mach3 coordinate problem that I'll spare you from here.

Anyway, one specific questions is that when I drill my .021" hole, it seems like when I pick the hole, it will not go to the depth I want, probably because the hole is interupted by 2 set screws holes in my part model. I think this should not matter, because I am "overriding" the depth by setting my Z lower plane to .75", which is full depth. But it does not work; the hole stops once it reaches the first setscrew hole. I should add, I am picking the curve on the exterior surface as anyone would intuitively do. The work around I did was to pick the curve at depth (past the second setscrew hole).

What is going on with the way I picked the holes for drilling?

Thanks