Freesteel Blog » Vertical Scallops

Vertical Scallops

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 at 6:18 pm Written by:

Scallop toolpath spiked
Scallop toolpath better

A week of hacking later, I am so tired of this. Absolutely mindbogglingly fed up. I truly had forgotten how hard and awful this algorithm was to get functioning. The memories keep getting sparked off as I am doing it.

A large amount of the work happens in the vertical areas, where it becomes difficult to tell what’s inside and out, hence you get all these spikes. The game is to find ways to filter them out without accidentally filtering out toolpath that you want to keep.

As usual, with every approach, there are flaws in the way I am doing it. However, since the flaws are challenged in a way that means the program has to deal with them face forward, rather than avoided, there’s a chance they may all be handled.

2 Comments

  • 1. Francis Irving replies at 16th November 2005, 9:48 am :

    What exactly is a vertical scallop? Too long ago since I last read toolpath screenshots for me to be able to tell.

  • 2. Julian Todd replies at 18th November 2005, 6:40 pm :

    It’s where the const stepover routine starts stepping down a vertical wall rather than horizontally across the surface. It’s a horrid special case, and is the special kind of discontinuity available on 3-axis machining.

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