In this lesson, we'll be creating a circular pattern of a tool path. After completing this lesson, you'll be able to create a roughing and finishing contour tool path, and use pattern to create multiple instances of a tool path. Let's carry on with the file from our previous example, and let's machine one of these smaller pockets in the part that we can later go back and create a pattern of. We're going to get started by using our 2D contour operation. I'm going to use 2D contour because the geometry of the tool and the geometry of the pocket is going to be close enough that I can simply come in and select the bottom, then I can use some of my options to create multiple step-downs and step overs. We're going to come into the heights, and we're going to tell it that the top height is going to be the top of our part here since we've had our machine down, and the bottom is going to be this selected contour. However, I'm going to extend this small amount, and in this case, we're going to assume our fixture has clearance for this geometry. We're going to move on to the passes section, and notice that we can do multiple finishing passes. If we want to do just a couple of finishing passes and step overs, we can do that, or we can turn on roughing passes. In the case of a roughing pass, we're going to allow it to do one step over, we're going to say okay and see what the geometry is. So as we look at this, we can see that we've got that one roughing pass and the one finishing pass. Also noticed that we have a warning. So it's telling us that the lead in and lead out or in this case just the lead out was dropped due to a linking constraint. So if we edit this tool path, and we take a look at the linking parameters, you can see that inside of here for lead in and lead out, our horizontal value is 0.025, but we could change this and do a ramp-in based on the contour. So if we don't want to do a lead in or lead out, we can use the ramping option. Let's take a look at this with the ramping option. So now using ramp, you can see we no longer have an issue with lead out, let's go ahead and just simulate this and see what this looks like. Let's zoom out a little bit, jump all the way to the end, then back a single operation. Now if we play through this, you can see that the tool comes down, it starts cutting above the part based on our settings, then it moves in and it starts cutting through this geometry. Notice that it doesn't look like it's cut all the way to the edge, but that's because we have a chamfer here, and it's actually cut the pocket to the right size, we just need to go back and create that chamfer tool path. So now we've cut this small packet and we can pattern it, but we also want to keep in mind that we might want to pattern the chamfer as well. When we think about things like this, we have to consider the tool changes, does it make more sense to create an operation and pattern both, or does it make more sense to keep the same tool, and create that operation all the way around? In this case, because we're still on tool late, it makes the most sense for us to create a pattern of this tool or to go back and select all of the individual contours for each of the packets. Either option will be just fine, but we're going to explore creating a pattern. From set-up, we want to select new pattern, and the pattern type we're going to use is going to be circular. The axis of revolution is going to be just one of our cylindrical references, and the number of instances is going to be eight. So notice that when we do eight with equal spacing as well as keep the original, we now have a preview on the screen of all the different tool paths. Notice that we have some order of operations, we can order by tool operation or preserve order. These are going to be based on if we have multiple tool paths that we want to use. For example, if we were patterning both this contour as well as the chamfer operation, then we could allow it to order by tool, go around, and create the packet, then come back and do the chamfer. So this is good information to know, and we're going to select Okay, and allow it to create those tool paths. Notice that now this is placed in a folder, and if we expand it, we have our contour operation and the information is contained within this pattern. Let's go ahead and select setup one, let's simulate it, we're going to jump all the way to the end, turn off the transparency, and just ensure all the packets are actually machined. So everything looks pretty good here, and now at this point in time, we can take a look at our geometry and ensure that we don't need to use this quarter in gen mill for anything else. We've cut the counter bore on the top of this boss, and we've cut all these packets. So the last things that we need to do are cut these chamfers and then we need to go back and drill and tap the center hole. So this means now we can come back and we can use our chamfers tool to create those chamfers, but this is a great time for us to save before we move on to our next step.
