PyCAM

First I have to explain, I have no professional knowledge of milling 3d or 2.5d. So right now I try to figure out how to get the results I´m looking for. I just stumbled over a strange thing when finishing the part with a dropcutter task. Vertical faces are not vertical anymore. They have a slight angle. I´m using a 8mm cylindrical cutter. So it should be possible to mill this vertical. What am I doing wrong?

Hi flatline, first of all: thanks for the screenshot - this usually helps a lot! Currently the implementation of the DropCutter always creates non-vertical lines. It just computes the height of the model at each position of a xy grid. The connection between two adjacent points with a different height is necessarily non-vertical. Can you think of a better approach? The current implementation schould be quite usable for natural shapes, but it is not sooo great for models with a lot of orthogonal corners. Alternatively you should run the ContourCutter before - then you won't notice the non-vertical line (through the air) in the second part of the program (DropCutter). cheers, Lars

Hi Lars, Ok, I understand. I realized that when I go for a higher percentage overlap, the grid is finer and the angle is much steeper. But your hint with the contour cutter is good. I will try this. To solve this "problem", I think the best way is to refine the grid when the difference in Z of two point next to each other is to big. Anders Wallin has som good explanation on his page. http://www.anderswallin.net/2010/03/octree-in-python/ cu Michael

Worked quite well. For doing this with an old 8mm metal-drill, the result is excellent. Thanx for this amazing software. Now I can do everything on my MAC and don´t have to deal with Windows. :)