Contour machining part 9 – Spiral stock removal – Alphacam #29

spiral stock removal

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Spiral stock removal – Alphacam


YouTube: https://youtu.be/-atF9rcMr7A

In one of the previous lessons, we talked about the parameter Helical Interpolation, which allowed to prepare spiral milling in the Z axis. An interesting parameter is the Spiral stock removal parameter, which allows spiral removal of material in XY axes.

spiral stock removal

After setting parameters such as in the picture above, we get:

alphacam spiral stock removal

As you can see in the figure above, the tool moves in a spiral (mapping the shape of the workpiece contour) and gradually approaches the contour.

With the Spiral stock removal, the Pitch parameter is strictly related, which determines the pitch of the spiral, i.e. the load of the tool. The higher the value of the pitch, the faster machining of the allowance, to the depth of one pass in the Z axis.

All the time we must remember that this applies to the allowance in the XY axes. The contour in the Z axis will be machined in the number of passes defined in the parameter Number of Cuts in the Levels and Cuts tab.

This is how the tool path looks from the side.

spiral stock removal alphacam

It is also worth remembering that the value of the Pitch parameter can not be greater than the difference between the Initial Stock  and Stock to be Left values.