Trochoidal Milling Profiles

[Imperial]

Hi,

I'm looking for a good way to profile my parts using a trochoidal milling pattern. I can get by with what I use but I would like to clean up a lot of my tool path. Currently I use cavity milling with the trochoidal pattern to do this but no matter what settings I use, my path is never optimal. I have been playing around with this for quit some time now. The Z level Profile option does not have a trochoidal option. For the sake of my cutters I would like to achieve a constant stepover when roughing the outside of my parts.

Furthermore, I don'y want to have to purchase 3rd party software like volumill to achieve this. I there anyways to achieve what I have described about above? 

I will attach a video showing the unnecessary tool movements. I will circle with my mouse the areas I'm talking about. 

Thanks. 

[MarkRief]

What don't you like in the current path - extra loops?

Can you post a part file with your current path? 

It would make it much easier to try some options that might help.

[Imperial]

Its an assembly. Will I have to include the individual parts in the zip files too?

[Stefan_Pendl]

If you created wave links from the bodies in the components, then no.

[Imperial]

Okay here is what I have. The biggest concern I have is that the tool can not exceed 60% of its step over. This forces me to keep the Stepover Limit % to 100%. Increasing this gets rid of the a lot of the extra tool movements but then it burys my tool to deap. 

I also tried changing the stepover to 30% and then changing the stepover limit to 150% to achieve my goal of never exceeding 60% stepover. This works but it doubles my toolpath. All in all I can not figure out a good way to do this. I don't understand why in many instances, when the tool is leaving the part that it feels the need to circulate out. 5% of the tool could be engage at that moment and it still cirulates. 

Thanks for the help!

[Dstryr]

What kind of material is this?
If it was me and this is a hard material I'd use a 3/8 or 1/2 tool, go full depth and use a 8-10% stepover with a 6 flute tool.

If this is aluminum I'd do the same strategy but bump use a 3flute aluminum cutter and change the stepover to 20%.

Toolpath using Cavity mill and transfer/rapid settings

[Imperial]

They're just basic steel. Could you send me the part file you used to program this tool path with. I didn't know without volumill that toolpath like that was possible. I'd like to see how it handles the circular motions with  your setting. This looks really good!!! 

Thank you

[Dstryr]

I have the volumill plugin and while cavity mill isn't perfect for mild steel this will be good.

I bought volumill when I had a huge job in 17-4 and s7 show up. Cycle time drop was maybe 10% compared to a good cavity mill toolpath but the tools lasted a lot longer due to the precise control of the engagement.

[Imperial]

Your path is really good. It still does the weird cut moves in that first corner when its starting off but it evens out later. I really wish there was a way to get rid of that.
What does volumill for nx cost? Can I add machining data to it so I can make custom methods for it and set my speeds and feeds based on those instead of manually typing them in everytime?

Thanks again.

[MarkRief]

@Dstryr nice job with the trochoidal! You can do quite a bit with this pattern, once you learn to adjust the cutting parameters. 

Since our adaptive milling is coming along nicely, I asked @jkane1 to try it on this part. It's hard to see the cutting path because most of it is below the green low height transfers, so I made a movie to show the material removal.