In this lesson we'll use 3D contour and ramp toolpaths. After completing this lesson you'll be able to create a 3D contour toolpath, at 3D ramp toolpath and demonstrate how to optimize a toolpath. Step down for curvature, infusion 360 we want to open two data sets, a 3D contour versus ramp and complex 3D finishing toolpaths. We're going to get started by first taking a look at 3D contour vs ramp. We can see on the screen that the adaptive operation has removed most of the material. We want to come in and explore what a 3D contour and a 3D ramp can do on this geometry. To get started I want to go into my operation for 3D contour and I want to select tool number six which is going to be my eighth inch ball in mill. From here in the geometry section we have several different options. The machining boundary can be a silhouette, bounding box, or a selection. In this case, if we use selection we can focus our attention solely in this area and allow the tool to center on the boundary or drift outside the boundary. Let's go ahead and take a look at what this produces with no other changes and say, okay. So you can see here, this gives us a pretty good result. Another way that we could go about this 3D contour operation in the geometry section is to use avoid touch surfaces. We could select specific surfaces that we want to focus on and we can tell it that we want to use these as touch surfaces. If instead we do that it's going to recalculate and focus its attention solely on those specific areas. So this type of tool path is a great option if you want to focus your attention just in a certain area rather than taking a look at the entire model. There are of course options inside of our heights and our passes that can change the way in which it takes care of this geometry. For example, we have a multi axis tilting option. So if you have 1/4 or 1/5 axis you can position the tool in a certain orientation to make sure that you're getting the best cut with that tool. We also have options to increase or decrease the tolerance, turn on smoothing, which will allow us to convert motion two arcs and straight lines wherever possible. We can also modify the step down value, for this I'm going to leave all those settings as default and I want to move on to taking a look at what a ramp operation can do. Right now the 3D contour is what we consider a constant step. So each Z motion is going to be at the same level and it's going to work its way around in X and Y. But one of the other options we have is called a 3D ramp. When we take a look at this, it's going to be constantly ramping downward. When we see what kind of options we have again, we have our machining boundary. We can use that same selection allow the tool to go outside and notice that there's a contact only option. Once again without changing any settings, let's see what this looks like. So you can see again, it focuses on the right area, it's giving us a different result and it's hard to tell because we're seeing the in stock model. So I'm going to right click on contour and I'm going to temporarily suppress it. This will allow me to see only what the ramp operation is doing. So if we take a look at the ramp, you can see that we have a very different results. We can make adjustments to get a little bit closer, but at the top you can see that we've got these sort of ridges that are being created because the tool is ramping down in a much larger step than with the 3 contour. Inside the definition for ramp, we also have an option for slope Instead of focusing solely on that area based on our selection, we could define a range of values from 0 to 90° to allow us to focus in on certain areas. For example, if instead of using that selection, we decided to go from one degree up to 89°, it would avoid all vertical walls as well as all horizontal surfaces and just focus its attention on those angled faces in between. Also, if we take a look at our passes, once again we can use smoothing but when we look at our tolerances and other things that we can change, there aren't as many options we can order bottom up and we can also change the maximum value of the step down. Now If you remember we had about .007 on that 3D contour. So if we change the ramp to something a bit smaller and we take a look at the stock, you can see that we're quite a bit closer to what that final shape is going to look like. Now in this instance, I probably wouldn't use either of these two completely finish this part. There are certain things that work well and certain things that don't and you can see that the ramp at the top is really not giving us exactly what we would want the 3D contours a little bit closer but neither option is probably perfect in this case. Before we move on, let's go Ahead and save this and then we want to check out the complex 3D finishing tool paths. If you open this file and you see a warning on one of the operations, go ahead and select it and regenerate that operation only because these adaptive operations are rest, meaning that they're taking a look at not only the geometry in the file but also the previous operations. Sometimes they need to recalculate if anything has changed in the file. So once this has been recalculated, we should see a preview on the screen of exactly what's being done. If we navigate through each one of these, you can see the first adaptive operation, took care of most of the material. The 2nd 1 focuses on this pocket and removing a bit more on this wall and then this third one is going back with the ball in mill and smoothing out some of this geometry. But now I want to take a look at what a 3D contour or that constant Z step sometimes considered a waterline operation will do for us in this case, in the geometry section. What I want to do is I'm going to use the bounding box option but then I want to focus my attention on avoid touch surfaces. We're going to focus on touch surfaces and to get started. I'm only going to focus my attention on this face. There are other options in here, of course where we can order bottom up order by islands. We can use flat area detection and it's a good idea to play around with these. But again, I just really want to get an operation created and then focus on what options I can change to get closer to that final. So you can see just with a quick glance at setting this up without really changing many options. We are getting a final or closer to final result on that wall Now, if we want to make any changes for example, go back to our surfaces and allow it to roll into this, fill it. Then we can have an update that cut, allow it to roll around that corner and get a little bit closer to that shape. So this type of operation is great and I always suggest that when you go in, you take a look at just those default settings before you start making too many changes. If you're working on a complex operation like this, it's also a good idea to focus your attention on just a few surfaces before you go and select everything you want a machine. Because you might find that selecting everything might cause the calculations to take way too long just to make a bunch of changes before you're happy with the final result. So I'm going to go through and I'm going to select all these faces making sure I include that small face. I'm going to allow it to go all the way into that pocket and recalculate it. Now that I've selected more surfaces it's going to take a little bit longer to calculate, but you can see the result that we're getting here. You'll notice that on these walls and around these filets iIt does a pretty good job, but when we get to this flat area, it's not leaving such a great finish. And that really comes down to cutting flat areas with the ball and mill is just not a very efficient use of the tool. So we would want to go back with a flat tool to make sure that we finish off those areas. Once again, plenty of options to play around with, such as the flat area detection. We can also modify things like our step downs and we can turn on options such as machine shallow area. You'll notice that this minimum shallow step down is in red and that's because our maximum step down value right now is less. So if we reduce this 2.007, this should allow us to go ahead and use that with the shallow areas. You'll see that it's going to take a slightly different approach with the tool in some cases. But let's go ahead and simulate this just to make sure that we understand exactly what the tool is doing. So it's starting at the bottom and it's working its way around going back and forth because we have it ordered bottom to top. Now, the reason you might want to use bottom to top is because you're actually using more of the tool. If you go top to bottom and you're pushing the tool down the wall, you end up simply smearing in some cases rather than allowing it to cut. If you're dragging up the wall, that means that you're, in most cases when you have an angled wall like this, you're almost pre cutting with the side flute of the tool. And then as the bottom or the ark portion of the ball and mill is getting closer to it, what you're then doing is getting that final cut. So this is a pretty good result, and there are some things that we could change in order to speed this up. So let's take one last look at our options before we save this file and move on. So we can repeat finishing passes, we can order by depth or order by island. None of these options are really going to change what we're going to do. Notice that the direction, however, we can continue on with only a climb cut, we can do a conventional cut or we can allow it to go both ways. The both ways option will allow the tool to go back and forth, which is going to minimize those retractions and rapid movements. However, when you use something like this, keeping in mind that a climb versus a conventional cut is going to likely give you a different result. Also notice that each time the tool is wrapping up and back down. This is another option that we can set in the linking parameters to keep the tool down and this will also help speed up the program. But this does a really good job of taking care of that geometry. You can see that the preview on the screen is really smooth and really close to the final and some of these areas like this fill it, we're going to come back with a pencil mill and clean up anyway. So I like the result of this 3D contour, and I would likely go back and select more faces and allow it to take care of this entire set of surfaces, assuming that tool could fit in there. But at this point, I want to make sure that I do save before I move on to the next step.
