It looks like the surfacing tool does not compensate for the bit diameter when defining the milling boundary.
So if my XY0 is set to the front left (which on my Altmill is about 30mm from the y rail) and I use a 2.5" diameter surfacing bit, it would mill right into the y rail. This is especially true since you recommend disabling soft and hard limits when using the surfacing tool (although you do mention setting the XY0 according to your bit diameter in RED).
Would it not be better if the surfacing tool compensated for the bit diameter and only milled inside the XY boundary defined (like a pocketing toolpath in vCarve would do) ? And if necessary, allow the user to configure an offset to mill outside that boundary, but with plenty of warnings to make sure you wonāt hit anything?
The only issue I see with this is a pocket cut leaves rounded corners and I donāt want that when I surface my spoil board. Iām not saying this is a deal breaker but it would have to be taken into consideration.
The way it is now I zero my XY so the bit just cuts the corner and get my dimensions by jogging to the opposite corner and making sure it will cut that corner. Obviously there is some maximum diameter where reaching the corner would also hit something. This maximum diameter would depend on the machine design and as gSender is used on non-Sienci machines it seems like it could get complicated.
EDIT: Maybe ādog bonesā in the corners could be a way to minimize the corner issue? That would lessen the area that the bit goes off the spoil board but the user would still have to check to make sure it wouldnāt hit. Now that Iāve said that Iām sure if dog bones would be of much helpā¦
I noticed that when I ran the surfacing tool and generated the g code the max depth that was set in the tool was not the same max depth listed on the details on the carve tab. I set the max depth @ .09mm in the tool but in the file details on the carve tab it listed the max cut at 3.
I think the Max is how high the bit travels from 0. I just set a surface job with 1mm for the Cut Depth and Max. The job size in Z is 4mm with -1 for the Min and 3 for the Max.
Setting Z to zero at the spoil board surface is kind of the only option for surfacing the spoil board and all the cuts take place on the negative side, below zero. For actual carves I often use the spoil board surface as Z zero and all my cuts take place on the positive side, above zero. So where you set zero will determine what the reported Min and Max are.
@Chucky_ott@_Michael@LarryLSimmons I donāt use that tool, but is the retract height the same as the āsafe heightā that can be set to the value that you want?
I talked about the safe height in other posts. Itās used when using the GoToās.
And on the on the Altmill with limits enabled, the safe height value is not used to move the spindle up by that amount, but rather it moves the spindle below the z max by the safe height value.
For example, if your Z max is 150mm and you have a safe height of 5mm, using the GoToās would bring the spindle to 145mm (5mm lower than the max) before moving in the xy direction. If your safe height was set to 50mm, it would move the spindle to 100mm (150 - 50).
But it looks like thereās a safety mechanism built in that it will only move the spindle up. For the previous example with a safe height of 50mm, if your spindle is at 75mm, it would move up to 100mm. But if your spindle is at 110mm, it would not move down to 100mm but stay at 110mm.
Safe height on the Altmill should probably be kept to a small value.