[timmydabull]

i have a champher i am machining from a ruled drive surface,and i can not get the tool to climb mill it will only cut counter clockwise.

i have tried switching cut direction,step direction and all 3 options for spiral zigzag,and one way to no avail.

this has been driving me nuts for some time now.

anyone have any suggestions

X3

[Superman]

You seem to be in the right area for controlling the direction

when selecting "flow parameters", it displays arrows,
the arrow positition is the start point of the path, the long arrow is the feed direction, and the short arrow is step over direction ,

Hope you have turned ON " single path"- this sort of joins the paths over multiple faces into smoother machining

Gaps = follow surfaces

Set "Direction" last, after you are happy with all the other settings
see my other post

[lovecnc2003]

thanks

[timmydabull]

found the single path check box.
havent been able to find out what difference it makes.
i am not fully understanding the selection broken gap,follow surfaces and smooth and in the gaps box.

mine is set to broken gap.

can fiddling with these parameters change direction of the tool as i havent figured a way to do so yet.

thank you

[Superman]

havent been able to find out what difference it makes.
no real difference on a single surface, mainly for multi-surface control on non-tangental joins etc.

i am not fully understanding the selection broken gap,follow surfaces and smooth and in the gaps box.
this controls how the tool behaves between passes
broken=moves XY then Z
follow surfaces= moves XYZ
these are the main two to use in an enclosed pocket etc.
if the gap between passes exceeds the gap size then it retracts goes to the next start point and continues on

can fiddling with these parameters change direction of the tool as i havent figured a way to do so yet.
select "geometry" , opens dialog box for selecting geom and has a flowline" box, this box will open a flowline data dialog box with grey toolpaths and those green arrows, this area is what controls the actual cut direction,,,,
BTW "offset" is not commonly used

[timmydabull]

thank you for the clarification on the Gap motions,i gave up trying to change the direction of the cutter and instead changed to a larger diameter to eliminate the poor finish of conventional cutting motion.

i spoke with my reseller and they could not explain how to change the direction either.

thank you for the replies.