This video series has been quite the education for me. Excellent work. I am currently on video 3 and should finish the part today. One thing I did different was instead of just hogging away the material between the two ramps, I decided to use that material as a testing ground for some of the features I had to mill in. I have a smaller machine and due to lack of rigidity, I have to dial down the speeds and feeds to get the finish I wanted. I was able to test out the tracing (engraving ), drill and tapping with different tap drill sizes, tracked how my bore milling was performing, chamfering and facing.
Thanks Kevin. There’s so many facets to Fusion 360 it’s really quite hard to understand what a number of the options do, or what they are for. Thanks to videos like this, I’m slowly starting to get my knowledge and understanding of these options. I’m regularly getting tool paths with stupid little wisps of movement that are cutting almost nothing, but don’t know how to remove them. I do have the box ticked in my preferences to stop wisp cuts, but still get them. Thanks again mate
almost every parameter in Fusion 360 has a tooltip pop-up if you hover your mouse on the right spot. These can be extremely helpful and quick to access. you may need to enable this option in your preferences if it isnt working by default.
I'm wondering if for this part, creating a sketch to constrain the adaptive and doing 2 adaptive operations (one for the central square and another for the angles), might not give more control? However your patch method is surely faster and a great tip!! Thanks! 👍
Great video! However on Set Up 3 shouldn't the stock height be set to 0.888? Because after the Facing and Adaptive 1, that is the actual height of the stock. Unless there is a reason you left it as the model height.
An extremely common question. In this case, does it matter all the much? Worst case scenario that cut is a little lighter on the machine than what it is going to show in CAM. For me it's easier to not have to worry about the match. Your stock may not be a perfect size from the metal supplier either.
Thanks for posting this - it's always really helpful to see how others tackle challenges. You could clear out the centre portion with your existing face mill. This is indexable, so less expensive than a solid cutter and can take quite deep stepdowns, despite the name. You could even do adaptive here if the cutter is narrower than the gap. Even if you don't want to do that clearing operation with it, the "hat" will come off more quickly with a face mill and won't wear out the end of your precious solid cutter. The last adaptive is covering about twice the cutting path (blue trace) than needed, as it is coming right round the side of the part for no benefit. Looks as if you might almost half the machining time if you limit the path. If you really want to make the most use of your face mill, use inserts with a large corner radius instead of a solid bull nose cutter to finish the angled face. There are many ways to do this and few right or wrong ones but I like to think reducing machining times and tooling costs are good habits to develop, even on test pieces. Looking forward to the final episode!
Hey question so wouldn’t the part warp after hogging out the interior necessitating a final facing op on the bottom side? Or is the bottom thick enough that it would still be within spec?
Do you make any use of the "machining models" feature for hiding the vice/patches, in real designs? I experimented with them on my production assemblies where I have many machining ops and want to iterate quickly. However they seem to slow down Fusion significantly. It regularly does loads of recalculation, apparently regenerating those extra models, when switching back and forwards into the manufacturing workspace (this is on a Mac M1)?
Hey man, I’m working on this part right now and I’m not sure if it’s due to a software update but following along and matching your settings I CANNOT get the adaptive clearing path to work on setup 2 whether it be for facing or otherwise. It refuses to recognize the stock box as geometry and just comes back with empty toolpaths. If I select the bottom face it creates a pocket in the center with a helix move and leaves walls where I don’t want walls. I’m not sure what’s wrong here or if it has to do with a software update since this video but any help would be greatly appreciated
I thought I had replied but I didn’t see my reply now. So maybe it didn’t go through? I’m about 99.99% sure it isn’t the result of a software update. If I had to guess, and I’m just taking a shot in the dark, I would edit your setup and make sure you have your part body selected as the body to machine. Did that resolve it?
I’ve never used a modeled vise in fusion. I know in the last video you used it to verify your clearance but I did not see that here. What was the reason for using the vise? If the end mill hit the vise in the simulation, would you be warned? I did not see you tell fusion the vise was a fixture and I had imagined that was required to get a warning.
You are correct. I didn’t set that part up. You can specify the vise as a fixture. If your tool hit the fixture, the tool would turn red. I used the vise in this case for two reasons. Mostly because I used one in the first setup. The second reason is the ball milling op that will be used to finish the sloped faces. The ball mill gets pretty close to the jaws. It just helps to verify you have clearance.
This video series has been quite the education for me. Excellent work. I am currently on video 3 and should finish the part today. One thing I did different was instead of just hogging away the material between the two ramps, I decided to use that material as a testing ground for some of the features I had to mill in. I have a smaller machine and due to lack of rigidity, I have to dial down the speeds and feeds to get the finish I wanted. I was able to test out the tracing (engraving
), drill and tapping with different tap drill sizes, tracked how my bore milling was performing, chamfering and facing.
I like how you describe multiple methods for achieving same results.
Thanks Kevin. There’s so many facets to Fusion 360 it’s really quite hard to understand what a number of the options do, or what they are for. Thanks to videos like this, I’m slowly starting to get my knowledge and understanding of these options. I’m regularly getting tool paths with stupid little wisps of movement that are cutting almost nothing, but don’t know how to remove them. I do have the box ticked in my preferences to stop wisp cuts, but still get them.
Thanks again mate
almost every parameter in Fusion 360 has a tooltip pop-up if you hover your mouse on the right spot. These can be extremely helpful and quick to access. you may need to enable this option in your preferences if it isnt working by default.
I'm wondering if for this part, creating a sketch to constrain the adaptive and doing 2 adaptive operations (one for the central square and another for the angles), might not give more control?
However your patch method is surely faster and a great tip!! Thanks! 👍
Great video! However on Set Up 3 shouldn't the stock height be set to 0.888? Because after the Facing and Adaptive 1, that is the actual height of the stock. Unless there is a reason you left it as the model height.
An extremely common question. In this case, does it matter all the much? Worst case scenario that cut is a little lighter on the machine than what it is going to show in CAM. For me it's easier to not have to worry about the match. Your stock may not be a perfect size from the metal supplier either.
Thanks for posting this - it's always really helpful to see how others tackle challenges.
You could clear out the centre portion with your existing face mill. This is indexable, so less expensive than a solid cutter and can take quite deep stepdowns, despite the name. You could even do adaptive here if the cutter is narrower than the gap. Even if you don't want to do that clearing operation with it, the "hat" will come off more quickly with a face mill and won't wear out the end of your precious solid cutter.
The last adaptive is covering about twice the cutting path (blue trace) than needed, as it is coming right round the side of the part for no benefit. Looks as if you might almost half the machining time if you limit the path. If you really want to make the most use of your face mill, use inserts with a large corner radius instead of a solid bull nose cutter to finish the angled face.
There are many ways to do this and few right or wrong ones but I like to think reducing machining times and tooling costs are good habits to develop, even on test pieces. Looking forward to the final episode!
Hey question so wouldn’t the part warp after hogging out the interior necessitating a final facing op on the bottom side? Or is the bottom thick enough that it would still be within spec?
Do you make any use of the "machining models" feature for hiding the vice/patches, in real designs?
I experimented with them on my production assemblies where I have many machining ops and want to iterate quickly. However they seem to slow down Fusion significantly. It regularly does loads of recalculation, apparently regenerating those extra models, when switching back and forwards into the manufacturing workspace (this is on a Mac M1)?
Thanks for sharing
Hey man, I’m working on this part right now and I’m not sure if it’s due to a software update but following along and matching your settings I CANNOT get the adaptive clearing path to work on setup 2 whether it be for facing or otherwise.
It refuses to recognize the stock box as geometry and just comes back with empty toolpaths. If I select the bottom face it creates a pocket in the center with a helix move and leaves walls where I don’t want walls.
I’m not sure what’s wrong here or if it has to do with a software update since this video but any help would be greatly appreciated
I thought I had replied but I didn’t see my reply now. So maybe it didn’t go through? I’m about 99.99% sure it isn’t the result of a software update. If I had to guess, and I’m just taking a shot in the dark, I would edit your setup and make sure you have your part body selected as the body to machine. Did that resolve it?
I’ve never used a modeled vise in fusion. I know in the last video you used it to verify your clearance but I did not see that here. What was the reason for using the vise? If the end mill hit the vise in the simulation, would you be warned? I did not see you tell fusion the vise was a fixture and I had imagined that was required to get a warning.
You are correct. I didn’t set that part up. You can specify the vise as a fixture. If your tool hit the fixture, the tool would turn red. I used the vise in this case for two reasons. Mostly because I used one in the first setup. The second reason is the ball milling op that will be used to finish the sloped faces. The ball mill gets pretty close to the jaws. It just helps to verify you have clearance.
FIRST COMMENT 🙂 Great job Kevin