How to change machine cutting area specs

I want my cutter to exceed the Journeyman’s 48" x 32" cutting area. I have found that I can cut past 49" using my 1 1/8" surfacing bit if I use the joystick. I cannot do this with my Fusion360 program. Somewhere along the line my toolpath is limited to the radius of the cutter being subtracted from the available cutting length of the Y or X axis. I don’t know where this is happening. I thought it might be in the machine profile used for post processing in Fusion:

However, oddly, there is no mention of the cutting dimension in that interface. Where can I change the cutting lengths? I’m suspecting that I need to change them in the BB control interface. And that is fine if that is the best/only place to do it.

If I’m using my surfacing bit, I want to increase the length of the cut to include 1/2 the radius of it at both ends of the piece I am working on.

I am at the beach and nowhere near my 1F so this is from memory.

First, places to look. Then a question.

In the tool path tabs there are three that might be causing an issue. One is the last tab with horizontal and vertical lead in. If those take it out of the machine boundary there will be an issue. Another tab to look at is path dependent, I think it’s there for 2d surfacing and 3d flats. It has an entry for pass extension…how far you want the bit to go past the edge so there’s a clean surface. That too can take it out of the machine boundary if the piece is near the edge (and surfacing the wasteboard is definitely near the edge :wink:). Finally, the second tab boundary can either cause a problem or help constrain the bit so you don’t get errors. There are three choices in the drop down for creating boundaries, bit inside, center in boundary, and outside boundary. Additionally, you can set a +/- offset to push it further both ways.

I use that boundary offset to constrain physical travel of my bit for surfacing passes. I set it an 1/8” back on my 1” surfacing bit and have vertical lead out 1/4”. This gives me 1/8” over cut on waste board and ensures both 1F and F360 don’t throw errors.

My question is when you say you can cut 49”, are you saying you get 49” of machine travel or 49” of cut? If the former, that’s awesome! If the latter, it looks like you’re not getting a full 48” travel (49”-2xbit radius*) =47 7/8” travel. That may also be causing issues if you try to move 48” in f360.

*you get 1 radius extension on each end of the pass. While it might be easier to say travel minus diameter, 2 x radius gives a view on where the extra length comes from

Thank you Mitch. Wow! From the beach! Okay…

Firstly, I’ll answer your question. My actual cut length was 49 7/8" x 33 3/8" using the 1 1/8" surfacing bit.

As far as the tabs go, here is a picture of the setup I used. Any comments? I wasn’t able to fully understand your directions.

face

One easy way. If you just need it to surface tour wasre board. Lie to the machine. Put a smaller diameter tool size into the program. Makes it easy. Dont use this method when machining a part.

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Good morning @JonnyDex, from the first pic you show (last tab in face operation) you do not have an lead in but you do have a lead out, which is one of the potential problems I mentioned. You have a 0.1125” lead out. I am only seeing vertical in that pic. Usually there is a horizontal and vertical setting. It may be that facing does not have a lead out (I’ll get to my theory later).

FYI if you hover over almost all of the settings in the CAM there is a handy pop-up with a diagram and/or description. For instance, if someone had no idea what “keep tool down” does, hover over the check box and they get a description.

Next pic. Since you are doing facing operation, it does not have the containment properties I mention that would allow you to constrain it to the box selection. Facing needs to be able to get at the part from outside the selection so it can take off the entire face. Which is why it doesn’t have a drop down to constrain it in that tab because the facing operation starts from outside the part and ends past the part.

To get facing to behave the way you want, you may need to lie to your program about bit diameter. I personally am not a fan of lying to CAM or ignoring errors F360 throws…while it will work, it may have unexpected outcomes and devilishly tough troubleshooting to figure out why whatever happened occurred.

The part I am missing that may make facing work for you without picking a tool size smaller than it is (a valid choice that will work and may have unintended consequences), I need to see the second to last tab, the one that looks like a tank filled with water. IIRC there is a pass extension setting that tells it how far to go past the edge of the part so you. Typically values are >>1/2 diameter to 1x diameter to ensure there are hesitations start / stop swirls on the edge of a part…drive it at speed past the edge before switching direction to lift the bit.

While it seems like a good choice, I find facing to be a challenging path for facing the spoilboard. I use parallel instead. I believe it’s a 3d path, but given there are only two top level choices—2d or 3d—don’t rely on rum fueled beach memory :tropical_drink:

For parallel, you can constrain the bit in the second tab (your 2d pic) you will have a drop down with three choices: inside, bit center, and outside. Additionally, there is an offset box that takes a distance value. I usually use center and 1/8 bit diameter offset. That will push 3/8 of the bit past the edge while keeping it within the boundary and not generate 1F errors.

Other operations are 2d or 3d pocketing. They are essentially the same with 3d being smarter about figuring out what pockets you want to cut and 2d needing to be explicitly told. In this case, 2d is where I would start since there aren’t any pockets in your model and 3d will give an empty tool path unless you give it a bounding box and depth to cut…which is essentially what 2d requires to know what to do (even if this was a real pocket)

Hopefully this helps. Sorry I can’t send pix to show my specific settings.

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What a great idea! Thank you

Hey Lynn,

this tip has already been given here :wink:

Hey @JonnyDex,

the machine dimensions (limits) are usually selected in the post processor.

Thanks again Mitch. You’ve given me a lot to look at and I appreciate it. I did try 2D Pocket but got similar results. I looked for any constraining parameters – obviously I missed the lead-out one…

Here is the tab you wanted to see: