I have noticed when pocketing that i am getting these “tracks”, seemingly at the end of finishing parts inside a pocket(islands in estlcam), the final tool path on a part. At first i thought it could be a leveling issue, but that would be gradual. Not on one tool path at the end. This has happened on pretty much everything i have pocketed. Annoying having to sand it out.
Any Ideas?
Thanks!!
Maybe it’s a bit of backlash in Z? Like you’re not getting the exact same position when you lift and lower the toolhead. This happened on my LR2 quite a bit and it was usually a sign my DOC or bottom pass was a bit too aggressive. Sometimes had to run the program twice if it was real gnarly.
I’ve also found it helpful to program so that you mill with the grain instead of across as much as possible. Those mill marks will be harder to see because of the grain direction, especially for open grain wood like oak, hickory or ash (or whatever is similar in your location.)
The weight of the router should be heavy enough to eliminate backlash.
But if the main pocketing operation pushes up on the router, it could be diving deeper on that final pass.
Adding a finishing pass would add a lot of time to the job, but it should clean that up.
ok, interesting. I will give that a shot. Thanks!
Also, if you’ve not done finishing passes before, and you’re in ESTLcam, consider this so you don’t make same mistake I did at first:
In ESTLcam, by default, any tool settings have the finishing pass depth set as blank. When blank, it defaults to a depth of cut equal to the tool’s overall depth of cut. This means if your job was say, 2mm DoC over 19 mm, the finishing pass would take 10 passes just like the original cut path did! However, if you go into the tool’s settings and manually set the finishing path to a DoC of 19mm, then your finishing pass will take only one pass!
ok, i need to play with that. i will be messing with that hopefully this weekend.
