Fast and efficient removement of high material amounts is the most important requirement for an economic machining. vectorcam offers different strategies for roughing your workpieces. We will show you in our monthly tip, how to adjust the right settings.

Fast roughing with vectorcam

The function “Fast roughing” removes high material amounts through high deliveries followed by smaller Z-constant upward cuts.

In the right picture you see the steps through high plunging depth. In the second picture those steps were removed by smaller Z-constant upward stages. The right picture shows the appropriate tool paths.

How it works:

The picture below shows the dialogue box of the function “Z-constant roughing”. The parameter “plunging depth“ and „intermediate stages“ are marked. With both settings the fast roughing function will be controlled.

Set the depth per flat, on which the whole flat will be milled, in the field “plunging depth”. With the number of intermediate cuts you can determine, in how many parts the defined delivery should be divided. The machining on the particular intermediate stages is just proceeding along the work piece. Thus, large plunging depths can be used to remove as much material as possible. The intermediate stages refine the large stages into many small ones. The larger the number of intermediate stages, the more sophisticated are the stages on the work piece.

Plunging depth 1 mm, number of intermediate stages 0 = conventional roughing operation

Plunging depth 5 mm, number of intermediate stages 5 = fast roughing operation

This method reduces the milling time of a CNC machine up to 70 % and more.