I’ve been tinkering around with carving in ESTLCam and have had some encouraging results. But I have a some questions about tool setup particularly in regards to tip angle…
So if I’m using a ballnose endmill what would the tip angle be? My thought would be that it 90°. But the economy endmills I bought say HRC55°. Which became even more confusing when some other engravers I bought showed up and were also labeled HRC55…
I’m no expert as i’m learning Estlcam also but based on the help screen, I’d say the angle would be 180 and the ballnose gets defined with the edge radius field (along with the diameter field).
Other Estlcam experts can verify. I’ll be watching this to see if my understanding is right.
Estlcam 12 finally has extra configurations for ballnose endmills, I am also pretty sure I was able to set the diameter of the tip of a tapered endmill as well.
I’d also recommend the finishing pass with the ballnose bit use 10% or less stepover for a much cleaner finish. While it increases the cut time, it requires much less sanding afterwards.
Yes, Tip angle is 180 for all but V-bits (v11). While setting the (maximum cutting edge) Diameter to 4/3.175mm and the Edge radius to 1.5/1mm is correct, v11 won’t know about the taper and you may want to adjust the Diameter relative to the depth of cut.
Only v12 supports tapered ballnose tools, but most manufacturers don’t list the angle and figuring it out requires the cutting edge length and a calculator (e.g. Isosceles Trapezoid, calculator and formula). The example assumes the 15 on your 3.175 tool box is the maximum cut depth (h).
Stepover is a percentage of tool Diameter. With tapered ballnose tools a stepover distance makes more sense, especially when the tool diameter is significantly larger than the tip diameter, e.g. 6 dia w/ .5 tip @ 10% = .6mm stepover (way too big).
