In this lesson, we'll learn how to reorder multiple finishing tool paths. After completing this lesson, you'll be able to; modify the order of operations to minimize tool changes and analyze tool paths for efficiency. Let's carry on with the file from our previous example and let's talk about reordering of the tool paths inside of our file. We've already explored several different types of finishing tool paths. In this example here, we've talked specifically about using pencil and scallop. But we've also talked about many of the other tool paths such as spiral radial and more spiral, and we use contour and ramp. Well we didn't explore all of the tool paths, there are many in here that you can still take a look at such as parallel, project, and morph. It's always good to take a look at the tool tip and this will maybe help explain a little bit more about some of the uses for this tool path. For example, parallel finished passes are best suited for shallow areas and they can be confined by a machine only up to a given contact angle. What this means is you can use that by tangency angle to dictate how much of the tool, in this case a ball and mill, will be allowed to contact the geometry. So there are many other options that you can think about when you're talking about three axis clearing and three axis finishing. But for our purposes, we want to focus on this part which has been fully programmed and we want to make sure that the order of operations make sense. So starting from the top down, we have a half-inch end mill that was used for clearing and facing of the flat areas. Then we changed this, and this goes down to a quarter inch flat end mill, this was used for some rest machining to clear off this sloping face on the part to get into the pockets as much as that tool could, and get into the pocket on the bottom as well as some of the areas on the bottom of the part to get a little bit closer to final geometry. We then go down a little bit and there's a 2D adaptive and pocket operation to clear out those bores. Then we move into semi-finish operation, which now changes to a different tool which is using an eighth inch ball and mill. So this semi-finish operation is followed by pencil milling operations. Then we have a scallop using tool number 1. Then we have a scallop using tool number 6. So what we want to focus on is whether or not the order of operations make sense and if we can reorder anything to minimize the amount of tool changes we have. Because right now after our semi-finish operation with tool 6, we then jump to tool number 1, we jump a tool number 2, then back to tool number 1. So really we want to make sure that it makes sense and that we're minimizing the amount of non-cutting time. The first thing that I would do when I identify this as I'm going to move tool number 1 above pencil 4. So it's going to come in and it's going to do the adaptive semi-finish here, then it's going to move into this scallop, and it's going to move into this pencil tool path. So this helps me in terms of clearing out this geometry. We then have tool number 2, which is used as a pencil mill to clear out this fill it, which is perfectly fine it's the only time we use that tool. Then we have scallop operations using tool number 6. So what I want to do is again, pair these together so we have our adaptive rest semi-finishing operation, then I'm going to put the tool number 6 scallop just below it. Then I want to put the tool number 6 scallop just below that one. Again, keeping them in order. Notice that this one has a caution next to it. It says it's invalid, but if we go in and try to regenerate it, allow it to recalculate it because this is a rest machining operation, it must have prior knowledge of other operations in order to calculate. So now you can see that it was able to recalculate and moving down the line again we have our scallop. We have our scallop here finishing that upper edge fill in, then we have our scallop going into that face, the larger pocket using a larger tool, then the pencil mill coming in cleaning this fillet, and then the larger one to finish up. Before I do anything else, I'm going to do a quick save on this file to make sure I've captured all of that restructuring, then I'm going to select setup 1, go into simulate and I'm going to step through this each operation at a time. So here we have the facing, we have our adaptive, which is clearing out more material getting a little bit closer, and then we've got the adaptive and pocket operations using tool number 7 then 6, then we've got six coming in and doing a semi-finish, then a scallop operation to clear out the two smaller pockets. Then we go to a different size tool, which is allowing us to clear out the upper edge of that fillet. Then we're cutting along the rest of the wall finishing out that geometry, moving into the pencil with the quarter-inch and end mill. Again, it's clearing out that geometry and the last step is again the larger end mill and it's clearing out geometry here. Again, I can't stress this enough, and I know I've said it many times, but the order of operations is going to be important, the order of which tools you use, the order of which geometry you program first, and we've looked at this by cutting the outside of a part first then cutting the inside. It's really a case by case basis. It depends on the tools you have, the material you have, the end result you're looking for, whether or not the surface finish on the outside is even a factor, whether or not you have critical tolerances in certain areas. These are all things that we will talk about again in our course, but just for right now, makes sure that you are comfortable with everything that we've done and that you're able to go in and explore these tool paths, and play around with them make changes and identify what some of those settings to change. Because while we've talked about a lot of settings and a lot of different tool paths up to this point, we haven't covered them all, because there are very specific instances where they really make sense in some where they just don't have any effect on the overall tool path. So remember after you're done playing with these files, go ahead and save them before moving on.
