The ISO Machining strategy is a powerful CAM tool that offers additional toolpath capabilities that the more commonly used 3D strategies do not cater for. ISO Machining is the process of cutting individual surfaces which belong to a larger solid or surface model. Although the strategy is effectively cutting a combination of faces the toolpath is still fully gouge checked against the machined piece.
The ISO Machining strategy is accessed slightly differently to the other 3D operations in the fact that it does not require a machining model to be present within the feature tree. The ISO Machining works directly off the faces of the model and not the underlying ‘meshed’ machining model.
Some of the benefits of ISO Machining are : High quality surface finish on micro parts, upto 4 separate sets of surfaces for gouge checking, plunge roughing capabilities, the use of lollipop cutters for undercut machining and the ability to run the centre of the cutting tool to the extremity of the surface boundary. This is particularly useful when machining radii or electrodes and prevents the need of creating extension surfaces.
Gaps along cuts
If gaps along a tool path are detected, then you have different choices of how the tool should pass the gap and continue machining. Depending on the size of the gap it is possible to define how the toolpath should be continued. For example, follow surface, blend spline, retract to rapid distance or retract to clearance distance. It is possible to set different options on whether the gap is considered small or large and this can be set as either a percentage of tool diameter or a physical limit.
For example, if tool diameter is 20mm and the gap size is set to 10%, then the threshold is 2mm. All gaps which are smaller than 2mm are considered small gaps and gaps greater than 2mm are considered large gaps.
