Take the plunge

A couple small projects I have require tabs and milling parts with restricted areas.
I like to avoid plunging end mills into work material and noticed these projects will generate a bunch.
A little research and I found sprut will automatically avoid plunge if it has holes it can use.

Again these are notes I take during setup and its easy enough to publish them to web format and or copy and paste here!


Plunge control

The following project has all tool paths restricted to specific area and more or less provide no place to engage work from outside part.
Water-line and other 3d mill operations will automatically use a hole drilled in pocket area to avoid vertical plunge of mill cutter into material or part.

To use this feature holes in each pocket need to be defined and completed. Sput keeps a list of these and if they are in the job zone and large enough the program will automatically use them as plunge points.
If these points are not defined in cad software in advance add as desired using 2d geometry tab as shown below

Attachment 250502


Use these as points for drill operations spot and size shown below


Attachment 250504


The tool selected for rough or finish operations needs to be smaller in diameter then the hole milled for plunge point
In this case a 0.375 dia hole drilled and a 0.25 end mill used for operations.
The following rough and finish operations have the job zone defined inside the dark blue colored construction line.
All tool paths will be restricted to this area.

Attachment 250506

Note how the plunge paths are all located in the 4 holes predrilled into the work piece.
This setup uses tabs to hold part in place during operations causing even more plunge tool paths to avoid each tab.
Four or more for each z level change in this case.
The pre drilled holes for tool to change levels in can be added and located as desire to optimize or limit added tool paths even. "the example above does not"
Experience and practice with locating the holes will aid software in generating more efficient tool paths and still use this method.

Clip taken during simulation showing the cutter using holes to engage work


Attachment 250508

This strategy can be used for pockets also. In most cases this will help most in difficult to machine materials that would damage end mills if they are directly engaged from axil position for long periods of use.

Hope this helps and provides others with more ways to get good results.
Have fun,
md