In this lesson, we'll be applying 3D clearing toolpaths to complex geometry. After completing this lesson, you'll be able to, create clearing toolpaths for complex geometry, compare toolpaths on the same part, and modify toolpath parameters. Let's carry on with our open pocket clearing file and explore our 3D adaptive clearing in pocket clearing toolpaths. Let's get started by first taking a look at pocket clearing. We're going to select tool number 10 from our CAD CAM library, which is a half inch flat end mill. Under the geometry section, we're going to set the tool from outside, making sure that stock contours, rest machining, tool orientation, and model are all off. If we need to, we can add an additional offset, in this case, let's go ahead and add half an inch which is the diameter of our tool. This ensures that we can get all the way to the outside of this geometry. For our heights, we're going to leave all the default heights taking us all the way to the bottom of the part. Underpasses, we're going to leave all the default settings with the exception of Max roughing step down, I'm going to set this to a larger number of quarter inch. Stock to leave will be 0.02 and we'll leave all the default linking perimeters and say okay. You can see even though this file isn't a traditional pocket and the tool that we're using isn't even small enough to fit into what is the pocket on this geometry, it's still able to clear material out for us. You'll notice that we do have a warning in here telling us that lifting retract plane to safe plane. So it's telling us that it wasn't able to retract to the retract plane and it had to go all the way up to our clearance plane. Let's right-click on this, and let's go ahead and simulate it. I'm going to navigate to the end of the tool bar just so I can see the geometry. So you can see what that quarter-inch step down, what's leaving us with, t doesn't necessarily match our original geometry in terms of the contour. In order to do that with a pocket toolpath, we'd have to have a much finer step-down which would greatly increase the amount of time we spend cutting. Let's go ahead and right-click on this and see the machining time as a reference. Right now, it's 18 minutes, but again, we have a very rough finished part. Let's go ahead and take a look at adaptive clearing in the same example. We use the same tool, we're going to use the same default settings, but turn off rest machining. We're going to allow this to use this stock contour with no machining boundary, we use all the default heights. Underpasses will make the same modification for roughing step down. So that way, we're on equal playing field. We'll use quarter-inch, but notice that when we're using adaptive, it also has a fine step down. So it's able to make intermediate steps based on the geometry or the curvature of the geometry we're cutting. We'll use the same stock to leave in the same linking parameters and say okay. So even though we're having the same max roughing stepped down, you can already see that this toolpath is creating a lot of those intermediate fine steps in order to cut this geometry. If we simulate this and again we simply jump to the end of the tool path, you can see that the final result is much closer to the shape of our actual part, which means that we can go in with a smaller end mill such as a ball and miller woolen mill and get closer to that finished geometry. Let's take a look at the statistics as well. The machining time for this is 14 minutes, so it's a little bit quicker, in this case, it's four minutes faster than the pocket operation. However, the geometry is much closer to our final shape. If we go into our pocket operation and we make an edit to our step-down amount, in this case the maximum roughing stepped down. If we set it a bit closer to what the fine step-down is on our adaptive toolpath, and we take a look at the results, you can see there are quite a bit more blue lines here which means it's quite a bit more feed movement. If we take a look at the statistics on this by going to machining time, it's now going to take over an hour and a half to machine. If we simulate this and again jump to the end of the tool path, the result is very similar to what our adaptive toolpath can do in 14 minutes, while the pocket toolpath in order to get that same result is going to take over an hour and a half. I don't want to make this seem like adaptive toolpath is the perfect option for everything, but in a lot of cases, the geometry is going to drive which toolpath you're going to take. In some cases, when we're dealing with simple 2D pocket geometry, the pocket clearing option makes the most sense. But anytime we start to add rounded edges or tapered geometry or more complex shapes, we want to make sure that we explore the adaptive clearing toolpath to make sure that this is going to be the best option for us. Mainly because the adaptive not only allows us to keep a consistent chip load on the part, but it also has the variable step-downs. But not only does it have variable step-downs, where it can have a course or a max roughing stepped down and a fine step down, but it also makes use of keeping the chip load on the tool consistent. We have lots of options we can do like machines shallow areas, turn on both ways, and even use the flat area detection. By turning all of these options on, we can make the most efficient toolpath to remove this material. With those extra options on, if we take a look at the machining time, notice that we have increased it, but if we take a look at the final result in simulation, we'll likely have a little bit closer representation to our final part. You'll notice that it added a bunch more steps in the bottom area here. So we have much finer resolution on the shape which means that we can come back in and we can cut it at a much higher rate using a ball and mill or some sort of curved end mill. From here, let's go ahead and make sure that we save our file before moving on to the next step.
