V bits and regular end mills are easy.
How does one go about setting up a ball end mill in Estlcam.
What are you trying to do with it?
It should the same as an end mill you just get radiused corners or smoother 3d milling with less step over.
Hi,
if you’re doing 2d / 2.5d stuff ball mills are just treated like regular end mills because it has no influence on the final CNC program at all.
Just avoid pocketing operations with ball mills - they are not suitable for this as they’ll leave an uneven bottom surface unless you specify a very very small step over value.
For 3d you can specify ball mills with the “Corner radius” field just below the tool selection dropdown list.
Christian
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Thanks guys…
So what would I enter in that corner radius field? The diameter of the ball mill?
One other maybe dumb question… Step over how much tool path overlap there is right? So 25 percent would cover 25% of the last cuts path? Lower step over faster machining
Half the tool diameter. I keep my finishing stepover at 15%, I rough out between 70 to 80%. If you open a stl in estlcam it brings up the 3d profiling windows with these settings in it.
Dang I could save some serious time. I have always used just under 50% for roughing (usually 48%) and under 10 for finishing, less if I’m using the ball end.
Easy enough to test it just create a small cut out box. I test all materials and bits before my real cuts this way.
So if i had a 1/8" ball mill my corner radius would be 1/16"?
ohhhhh… Did i have backwards? The higher the step over 80% the less overlap? So 80% step over would overlap 20% with the last cut path right?
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correct